Plan B
by seghen
Summary: But as Abby stood before him, terrified, vulnerable and clearly shocked and stung by his perceived treachery Henry found firsthand that even the best laid plans often go awry. AU
1. Run

**I think this is going to be a multi-chaptered story, I'm planning on four or five chapters, so please tell me what you think, those who read this. Constructive criticism welcomed!**

She ran. There was no looking over her shoulder or wasting time with a pathetic emotional display, she just ran as though her life depended on it. Well, it really wasn't all that hard, seeing as it did.

The rocky terrain was not conducive to smooth on-foot travel, but she didn't mind. Abby didn't want it to be cut and dry, she didn't yearn for simplicity. She wanted to feel, she wanted to work to keep her balance and focus on the task at hand so she wouldn't have to think about Jimmy. Of course it was all in vain, no distraction could stop her mind from going back to the church. The church where her best friend was supposed to marry the girl of his dreams, the church where Thomas Wellington was practically cut in half, the church where Deputy Lillis was found and made into a human Pez dispenser, and the very same church that Chloe was abducted from.

That fucking church.

Trish's mangled body haunted her mind, but the past week had been so wrought with havoc and gore that she was capable of selective amnesia for the time being. She processed it and stored it in her memory bank for grieving at a later time and place...allowing that she lived long enough to do it.

Trish was dead, as were so many others. She hadn't thought to keep a running tally in her head, but she knew from an earlier list that it must have exceeded two dozen by now. What about Sully? Danny? There were no definite answers concerning them, but she had a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach that they had joined the rest of the wedding party. It was a sad state of affairs when one can decisively distinguish fear for a friend's well being from a morbid certainty of their demise.

But Jimmy was alive...is alive? There was a gunshot, even in her frenzied state of mind she couldn't push that irrefutable fact from her thoughts. It had rang, clear as day, but she obeyed his order. _His last wish..._she shook her head decisively, she couldn't think like that. Wouldn't think like that. Jimmy had more lives than a cat, it seemed, and his penchant for survival had drawn more than a little suspicion. He was alive, he had to be.

She nearly lost her footing but plowed onward, still clutching the flare in her hand, listening only to the sound of her heart throbbing in her throat and the whipping propellers of the helicopter somewhere in the near distance. She was going to make it.

Henry had chased after her, but she was too absorbed in escaping to hear him coming. He called her name once, twice..._three times a lady_, and she didn't register it for a good long moment. But getting away was more important, and something primal, beyond sense and reason, told her to continue onward. Henry wanted them to escape, he had tirelessly tried to secure it and all he had to show for his efforts was a viciously slaughtered wedding party and a recently murdered bride.

Survival instinct plowed her forward but Henry was quick, he caught up and called her again, and she turned around. And something clicked in her head. But she wasn't ready to believe it. "Where's Jimmy?" she asked, heart pounding and voice wavering.

Henry's expression turned sympathetic. "Wakefield got him," he said and the sadness in her eyes made him shake his head, "I'm so sorry." And he was. The last thing he had ever wanted to do was hurt her, but here they were, in the middle of the woods, and his father was coming. "You know where we were supposed to meet them?" he asked, looking skyward.

With the adrenaline pumping incessantly through her body and her fight-or-flight mode geared toward the latter, she hadn't had time to consider what the coast guard had said...Henry claiming to have not seen Sully when information from a nonbiased source clearly said otherwise.

"The marina." There was a helpless desperation in her voice that he didn't quite understand. He opened the blade from behind his back. "The guy on the radio said...that he talked with you and Sully." She still couldn't believe it. Wouldn't. This was her friend, the reason she had come back to the island. Henry Dunn wasn't capable of murder.

He had told her that she wasn't a killer when they ambushed Wakefield, and her inability to pull the trigger on an unarmed and injured man proved him right. "_Neither are you,_" she had said with complete and total certainty. But right now she found herself incapable of fully believing it. "You said you hadn't seen Sully," there was no accusation yet, just statement of fact but the pain was there and Henry didn't like it.

"I haven't." He couldn't help but wonder why he was bothering to lie. Then he saw her face and knew that the only excuse was that he couldn't stand to see her looking at him like that. "Abby," he said, his father appearing behind her.

"What's wrong?" Even then she sounded like she trusted him, like it was impossible for the boy she had known all those years ago to morph into a psychotic killer when all evidenced was indicative to the contrary.

Henry had realized before that he couldn't kill her, he had ended so many people's life without much emotion or remorse but not Abby. For a man who had killed so many, the thought of causing harm to her was just about enough to make him sick to his stomach.

"It's okay," he said soothingly and he brought his hands to the front of him, knife pointing outward. Her eyes went down to it and her unease sharpened, accompanied by unparalleled fear.

When she looked at him he could see it in her eyes. The doubt, the confusion, the betrayal. And he wanted it to stop. He couldn't stand to have her look at him like that, like he was dangerous. Deranged.

Wakefield stood, at the ready, just waiting for Henry to do it. He hated the weakness that Abby Mills brought out in his son, and he needed to be exorcised of that demon once and for all. Despite Henry's insistence that he was ready to surrender his current persona and fully become Henry Wakefield, his father knew better than to take him at his word. He needed to see it for himself. Needed to see his son end this once and for all.

Henry hoped that his father had finished Jimmy, finally eliminated that pesky annoyance. He had survived for far too long as it was, miraculously escaping his exploding ship and leaving the Cannery massacre unscathed apart from his recently acquired and aesthetically pleasing cuts and burns. Henry could not stand the way he looked at her, the way they looked at each other. Jimmy loved Abby, of this he was irritatingly certain, but he could state with equal conviction that he loved her more.

Harper's Island was Henry's home. In his mind he associated happiness with the island, which more or less meant that the island and Abby were one in the same. Despite his father's best laid plans all he wanted was to live the life he was meant to have, on the island with the woman he belonged with.

He had cared for Trish, at one point he was certain that what he felt was love, but it paled in comparison to the real thing. Trish had been something he grew out of, a youthful and passionate romance that neither of them were mature enough to move forward. Abby was someone he had grown into, she was the only thing in the world that made sense to him anymore. She didn't play games or withhold affection. She was never ambivalent about their friendship, even when they were separated by many miles she made it a priority to stay in contact because they were connected. And they always would be.

He had been in love with her for so long that he couldn't even remember when it had begun or when he had realized it. But Abby was a part of him and loving her was as important to his survival as possessing a working heart or fully functioning lungs, it was an integral part of his DNA and that was something that his father could never and would never fully comprehend.

Wakefield spoke of love, but he didn't understand it. He wanted Abby dead, he wanted her blood to run in the ground, wanted her to take her last breath on the same island where both her mother and father had perished, where she had been born.

And he had to admit, it had a certain air of poetry to it, rife with irony. The Mills line was supposed to end here and now, and Henry could complete his ascension into who he was; Henry Wakefield.

But as Abby stood before him, terrified, vulnerable and clearly shocked and stung by his perceived treachery Henry found firsthand that even the best laid plans go awry.

In a rare moment of clarity, Henry thought about what it was he wanted. To destroy all remaining ties to his former identity, to begin a new life on a clean slate in the only place where he had ever felt that he belonged with the woman he knew he belonged with. He always felt a surge of anger when remembering his parents, their years of lying despite the fact that summer after summer he was thrown in with his own biological mother and became friends with his half sister. It wasn't fair, Mr. and Mrs. Dunn had effectively enabled him to fall in love with his own flesh and blood by their omission.

He nearly vomited the night his father set him free. Not because of the murders, the bloodshed, but because of her. Yes, he had loved Abby then, thought of her often and in a distinctly unbrotherly manner. His own parents had known who she was and they said nothing, watching year after year as they grew closer, by their second summer the pair were nearly inseparable, and yet they remained silent on the matter. They had both breathed a sigh of relief when Henry and Trish had gotten together, for years they had feared that something would happen between he and Abby but they didn't want to upset the apple cart, they were afraid of how he would react.

Summer after summer he begged and pleaded to stay on the island, and they were terrified that if he knew that he had a tangible connection to the Mills he would want to leave his parents and remain on Harper's Island. And they had loved him and had long since entrenched themselves in a ditch of denial in order to justify the continued charade.

Wakefield was ready, excited. He wanted to watch as she took her last breath, see the betrayal in her eyes as she bled out. Maybe she would ask "why?" all pathetic-like and he could have the honor of ignoring the question. Her mere existence almost destroyed the life his son deserved. _Like mother, like daughter._

If Henry had to chose between the island and Abby, the latter would win out every time. He saw the vulnerability on her face clear as day and for the first time he was stricken by the odds. _What are the chances that she could ever forgive me? _He knew that she must have been working hard to conceal how she felt about him, that the pain of hiding her true emotions must have been almost equal to his. But he thought about her expression when they discovered Trish, when her father had been killed in that very creative manner courtesy of John Wakefield, when he had just told her that Jimmy was no more...there was no uncertainty.

It was one of the many things he loved about her, she wasn't prickly and complicated. He knew that she loved her friends, loved her father, _loved Jimmy..._that was a thought that nearly sent his blood boiling. He couldn't believe it was hitting him now, that after all of his self-deception the truth was outing itself. Abby wouldn't be happy locked up in a house with the man who had orchestrated the deaths of her friends. It was odd that the thought had never really occurred to him, all along he had told himself that she would give in when he offered full disclosure, that once she understood the depth of his affection she would have no choice.

But his certainty wavered.

_And what does it matter now? _He wondered. _Everyone is gone. I'm all that's left._ And that truth excited him more than anything else. He had wanted to grandstand, show her how she had been more important than the man who delivered him from a life of mediocrity, that she had been the only person on the earth that he couldn't live without. A world without Abby didn't make sense to him, but if necessary he could leave the island...

He just wanted her to stop looking at him like she didn't know him anymore, when she was the only person alive that had the ability to understand him. He had wanted to keep her to himself, to have it be just them again, like it had been during the summers of their youth. Henry and Abby...together forever. And that was an issue on which he wouldn't compromise.

"It's over," he said, but not to her.

He rushed forward, knife in hand, and pushed her aside. "Get to the marina!" he said, knowing that his father's reaction would be all too telling. The knife entered his chest and for the first time John Wakefield looked surprised.

Abby hesitated for a moment. "Go! Don't wait for me!" She obeyed, still confused. He pretended to grapple with his father, though he was immobile from the shock and pain. "I'll explain later, get to the helicopter now," he said with unmistakable urgency.

And she ran again.

"Henry?" It was his turn to look betrayed, and Henry couldn't blame him.

"It's over," he repeated.

And he watched his father die, it took slower than he would have liked but too fast for him to say anything else. No biting last remarks, no attempt to take Henry down with him. He loved his son and did not understand what had changed. Ironically, it looked as though Wakefield had wanted to ask him 'why,' after all of their careful planning, Henry had changed the rules. Little did Wakefield know, he had always had an alternate objective in mind. But he loved Abby more than he loved his father, and wanted her more than he wanted the island.

Blinking back the tears that welled in his eyes, Henry dropped the knife and ran after Abby, wiping the blood onto his shirt and pants as well as conjuring up a sufficiently horror-stricken expression along the way.

The police met Abby at the marina, instantly taking her by the hands and hoisting her onto the helicopter. She felt no relief as she was forced into a sitting position, but she promised herself that she would never again run like that. She saw their mouths move and sound came out but she couldn't understand a single word they were saying. "The church, go to the church," she said, not sure if this answered any of their innumerable inquiries but too dazed to care.

She didn't understand. For a moment she had thought...no, she had _known _that Henry was going to kill her. That he was the elusive accomplice, that for some horrible reason he had been the cause of all of his closest friends' and relations' deaths. _J.D...Trish_...

Several of the uniformed officers sprinted into the woods, weapons at the ready, but three stayed with her. A woman, perhaps a few years older than her, looked Abby in the eyes and slowly spoke. But it didn't help, her heart was pounding in her ears, she was 99 percent sure that she was suffering from shock and for the life of her the words the woman spoke did not make any sense but she could hazard a guess at the question.

"Henry," Abby said without thinking. "He's...I think he's all that's left. He was fighting with...with Wakefield." Her voice was uncommonly steady and Abby fixed her gaze out the window, unblinking, just waiting for him to come into her field of vision. She didn't understand it, she didn't know what was going on, why he had lied about seeing Sully, if the coast guard was mistaken, if she was confused, but for the moment that didn't matter. All that mattered was that Henry was alright, he had attacked John Wakefield to save her life and ordered her to find the helicopter. Those weren't the actions of a killer.

_I should have stayed, _she thought to herself, but in the back of her mind she knew better. Henry hadn't wanted that, and it was one of the many stupid mistakes that characters made time and again in horror movies. _I'll explain later,_ the words still rung in her ears. What did he have to explain? And dear Lord she prayed that there would be a later. That she could see him again. He was the only thing left that mattered. She would have time to cry for Jimmy, to miss him as well as all the others. Nikki...they had been friends for so long and she had died at such a hectic time that Abby barely had time to miss her.

There had been far too many near misses, too many moments where it seemed as though they were out of danger when at the last moment they were all thrust back in again. _They..._there was no 'they' anymore. Just Abby, and she hoped beyond hope that Henry had survived.

The officers tried to speak to her, but she was beyond reach. She stared out the window, craning her neck to look for Henry. He had to be okay, he had to be alive. He had saved her life and risked his own, even if the details didn't mesh she couldn't find it in herself to care at present. The woman officer tried to capture her attention, but Abby shrugged her off, eyes never leaving the area that she herself had stumbled out of.

Her willpower finally broke and she blinked, and the moment her eyes reopened Henry was there, covered in blood but seemingly unwounded. She opened the door to the helicopter amidst the protests of the police, but she paid them no mind. And she sprinted again, immediately disregarding her resolution to never run like her life depended on it. It hadn't taken her long to break that promise.

Something in Henry's face was broken, but how couldn't it be? His brother, his fiance and all of his friends had died in one disastrous week. She threw her arms around him enthusiastically and he reciprocated, lifting her off of the ground and spinning her around. The relief was palpable. He kissed the top of her head, lingering for a moment to enjoy the feeling of her in his arms before he reluctantly let her go.

"Oh, God. I thought I lost you," she said, tears running freely down her cheeks, the flare still clutched in her hand. It was hard to believe that paranoia had led her to doubt her best friend, but the evidence had been stacked up against him. But honestly, if he had arranged an elaborate scheme to kill everyone with the help of John Wakefield why on earth would he leave her alive? She had seen him with Trish, and knew that there was no chance in hell that he could ever bring harm to the woman he loved.

Henry shook his head and buried it in the crook of her shoulder. "Never."

They boarded the helicopter together, Henry stood behind her to help her in before turning to the nearest officer and handing him his bloody blade wordlessly. "Where did you get this?" the man asked with a hint of suspicion.

Henry's eyes flickered up and pierced the cop's. "From Chris Sullivan," he said, "he tried to kill me."

**Tell me what you think!**


	2. Free

**Thank you all so much for the reviews! I'm glad you guys liked the first chapter, I really hope that this one is as good. I really appreciate the feedback ;-)**

Henry clasped Abby's hand throughout the duration of the helicopter ride. She was beyond noticing.

No more questions were asked, but the officers kept a close eye on the pair to ensure that they weren't communicating, making sure that there were no subtle attempts to get their story straight. The fact that they had emerged relatively unscathed from a mass murder was enough to illicit more than a little suspicion.

They needn't have bothered. Abby had temporarily lost the ability to string a sentence together, let alone a detail rich backstory. She didn't even acknowledge the physical contact, she was too wrapped up in her own thoughts and could hardly believe that it was over. She still didn't really believe it. The idea that Wakefield was dead and the murders had finally stopped was just too much for her to absorb. At any moment she expected him to spring up like Jack Bauer and scale the side of the helicopter to finish them off.

It was already decided amongst the police that top priority needed to be (apart from getting definite numbers on exactly how many people were dead and trying to uncover any other potential survivors) figuring out what the hell had happened on Harper's Island.

And Abby Mills and Henry Dunn would know better than anyone, even Shea and Madison Allen.

They took off, leaving several well-trained cops to scope out the situation on the island with another boat on the way, but they needed to get the story straight from the only two people who knew the truth. The officers kept a close eye on them, trying to see if either or both gave any tell-tale signs of guilt.

But Henry wore his mask well, the grief and pain continually flickered just as he knew it did in natural circumstances. That was a common misconception, that people wore their emotions like a pair of shoes. It wasn't constant, nothing was constant. No one would have guessed that the gears were whirring in his head as he weighed the evidence, considered what Madison and Shea would say. Fortunately Madison had proven herself to be completely untrustworthy, even by a child's standards, and Shea was tainted by a natural maternal prejudice.

His mind worked quickly, and before they touched down he already knew exactly what he needed to say and what he was going to say when they were separated and interrogated. He knew what he had to do to make everything right. How he could finally fix this.

"What are the chances that during this island-wide massacre the bride and groom are half of the surviving party?" asked Officer Moira McDane in a hushed tone, casting a furtive look at the pair.

Her partner rolled his eyes. "That's not the bride," he said curtly.

Moira's eyebrows shot up into her hairline and she did a double take.

If Abby was in her right state of mind she would have bristled at the fact that she was being treated as a suspect rather than a woman who had just lost nearly everyone on earth who mattered to her. Officer McDane silently escorted Abby out of the helicopter and she could barely register the fact that she was finally free. Off the island, away from Wakefield.

Away from her father...away from Jimmy. Something crumpled inside of her, but the police had no patience for it. Henry's eyes followed after her like magnet to steel before he reigned himself in. He needed to concentrate.

* * *

"And my sister?" Shea asked with a shaky voice.

The formidable FBI agent glanced downward, and she already knew the answer.

"I'm sorry. Apart from you and your daughter, it appears that the only other survivors are Henry Dunn and Abigail Mills. But...your sister was found." And she knew what that meant. Just like Beth was 'found'. And Richard. Tears stung her eyes and she fought to remain composed. No matter what, she needed to keep her countenance. Falling apart was not an option. Never an option. At least not for her. And she couldn't even remember why it was so important anymore.

She glanced down at the images of the dead, the very same people she had been rubbing shoulders with mere days before. It was hard to believe. No...near impossible. She kept hoping that she would open her eyes and it would all go away, like some stupid dream sequence in a movie. Could this all just be a dream? She always hated the deux ex machina but now more than ever she was praying that it would be so.

Danny died for them, to get her and Shea to safety. Sully effectively got them off of the island, staying behind and risking his life for his friends...or what was left of them.

"You're sure?" she asked, knowing that it was a stupid question but unable to refrain from asking nonetheless. The looks of sympathy were answer enough. "Trish," the word was almost a whisper. She had come to Harper's Island a happily married mother about to be maid of honor to her sister. Her best friend. And now she was effectively a sibling-less widow, not to mention orphan.

She wished that she had never gotten on that boat. She wished that they had never gone to the island. But if wishes were horses...you know the rest.

* * *

It was funny, really. The police really seemed to believe that turning the heat up a few degrees would sweat him out, get him to spill whatever secrets they suspected he was harboring. As though a few degrees would act as a truth serum, or the heat would make him anxious. If he were alone he would smile at the inanity, but as it was amusement wasn't supposed to be on his emotional palette for the time being.

Henry leaned his face into his hands, but he didn't cry. It wasn't that he was incapable, crocodile tears were hardly a challenging feat, but he didn't feel such theatrics were necessary.

"Is Jimmy...?" his voice trailed off. It vexed him to no end knowing that this would be one of the first questions Abby would ask. He had told her that he was gone, and he kicked himself for his uncertainty. He hadn't had time to check for a pulse, he could only hope that Jimmy Mance had at last run out of extra lives.

If he had survived...the mere hypothetical made Henry's blood run cold. It wasn't possible. At least that was what he told himself. That errant thought brought him the closest to panic that he'd been since he waited on the boat headed to the island without Abby in sight. If Jimmy was talking that would explain the police's hostility, which hadn't concerned him before.

He figured that they were very eager to put this all behind them and allocate blame, scapegoats were handy tools and it was an embarassment to the police force that the missing deputies hadn't even been noticed when the call had come in from the radio on Harper's Island. Not to mention the fact that the Seattle police department hadn't bothered to check up on Sheriff Mills' claim that he killed the elusive psychopath John Wakefield. Those facts alone were enough to make the officers wary of making any more blunders.

And blaming one of the survivors seemed the easiest way to do this, to make it look like they could at least do something right.

But if somehow Jimmy had gotten lucky again...everything would be ruined. It was clear that he had seen enough during their confrontation at the church to know that Henry was working with Wakefield, and even if it could never be proven the suspicion would hang over him like a dark cloud for the rest of his life.

Even that he could deal with, but losing Abby? That wasn't an option. It almost made him cringe to think of the look on her face when she had pieced things together, when she had realized the truth. It wasn't much longer until she dismissed her theory, overwhelmed by emotions and seemingly incontrovertable evidence indicative to the contrary, but Jimmy's word would mean a lot to her. She'd never trust him again.

For once Henry didn't need to fake the despair that clouded his features.

His interrogating officer who had introduced himself as Deputy Chief Reynolds bowed his head. "I'm sorry, but Mr. Mance perished in the fire." There was also the issue of a nonfatal gunshot wound, but they would address that later.

Henry felt almost giddy from relief, but his expression never wavered. "Trish..." he said, wrought with despair. "I know that she's...I saw in the church," his voice cracked quite convincingly. "There's no way that she--she couldn't...?" His voice trailed off and once again the interviewer was forced to bring tidings of bad news.

"I'm afraid not, Mr. Dunn." But there was sympathy where before there was suspicion, and that was progress. "You, Mrs. Allen, Madison Allen and Ms. Mills are the only survivors of Harper's Island. Bar none." He had dealt with grief stricken people before and knew that they were notoriously hopeful and sometimes thick skulled when it came to being confronted with reality.

Henry slid his crossed arms onto the hard table and sank his head into the gap in the middle. "Oh God, this is all my fault. I never should have...everyone's dead because of me!" And he was quite satisfied with that fact.

Contrary to the interviewer's belief, Henry didn't shy away from reality. Especially not when everything had worked out according to plan...well, the plan needed tweaking but in the end all was satisfactory. He hadn't counted on Shea and Madison escaping, but it was of little importance. If there were two less imposing people on the island he couldn't fathom who. Shea had always been preoccupied with her daughter and her daughter alone, to the point of missing what was going on right underneath her own nose. He wasn't concerned with her. She didn't get in the way.

"Are you up to telling us what happened?" Reynolds tried to look patient, but it was clear that he just wanted to hear his side of the story to see if it meshed with Shea's and Abby's accounts. They didn't trust Madison's word very much, though she had mostly just agreed with her mother and had oddly spoke of John Wakefield as a friend.

Henry nodded, wiping his dry eyes and looking up. "Yeah, I guess there's no time like the present." He lifted the water glass that they had given him, fully aware of the fact that they probably wanted to check his fingerprints in the system just in case. He didn't take a sip, however, on the off chance that they decided to do genetic testing. It was a far shot, it was expensive to do and if he timed his performance correctly they wouldn't have any suspicions.

"I won't walk you through the body count...we all know already." He shuddered convincingly. "Wakefield attacked the Cannery when Danny, Abby and I were...handling the Sheriff's body. How could he be...have been alive? It didn't make any sense, some of us dug up his grave and there was a body in there. We were all wondering why he came back after all of these years I mean...we even thought that Abby might have been his daughter."

Shea had told them as much.

"But that's ridiculous," Henry said with an edge to his voice. "Wakefield was deranged and confused. He thought that Abby's mom had his kid but I didn't think it was true. He told Abby that he found him and I...I trusted everyone, none of us could believe that it was someone with us. Except Jimmy." He sighed and lowered his eyes with slight embarrassment.

"I really thought...he was with Trish and she disappeared, he had a criminal record, and something really bad almost happened. Sully and I were ready to kill him, thank God Trish came back. It was stupid, but I guess in the end it didn't really matter." He glanced up discreetly and absorbed Reynolds' facial expression and knew that he had him...hook, line and sinker.

"I'm such an idiot. One of my best friends...and I didn't even see it. Sully was more than willing to gun Jimmy down, but I can't say too much about that. I was the same, but I never thought...it wasn't possible for him to do something like this. I mean, I know Sully, okay? And I know that he isn't capable of, of doing something this horrible. I mean, all of our friends. _His _friends. It just...I can't even believe it and the guy came at me with a knife, for cripes sake!"

Deputy Chief Reynolds often found it easier to allow the witness to go off on a tangent, but in the interest of time he interjected. "And how did that come about?" he asked.

The pained look on Henry's face would be enough to make an untrained officer wince. Reynolds mentally noted that the likelihood of faking an emotion that intense was slim to none, and before he even realized it he had discounted Henry Dunn as a suspect, despite some apparent and suspicious discrepancies. But he would address those later.

"I went to the boat house after Trish and I were separated, I figured she'd want to meet back there. I was so stupid, I didn't even wonder how Wakefield could've gotten out, I didn't even think about the fact that I was alone with the only person, other than me, I guess, that could've possibly let him out of the jail cell. You said Shea and Madison are alright?" Reynolds nodded. "Thank God, I didn't think Sully was telling the truth when he said that he put them on a boat." Henry's eyes flickered upward and pierced the Deputy Chief's.

"It's just...why would he let them leave?" Reynolds had been wondering about that as well. Henry shook it off, running his fingers through his hair and shuddering.

"I've been friends with him since we were practically kids, and when he said that...I don't know, I thought he must be joking. It would've been an awful joke, but I couldn't believe that my best man would conspire with a psychopath to kill my wedding party." The very same thought had occurred to Reynolds.

"He was toying with me, and that's the only reason I got out alive. Now that I look back, some of it does make sense. He had a thing for Chloe, Wakefield kidnaps her and sticks Cal like a pig. He was always ready to accuse someone, anyone, but I just thought he was scared. I mean, all of us were. I didn't know who to trust but I never would have thought..." he trailed off, and D.C. Reynolds took the opportunity to speak once more.

"How did he attack you?"

Henry grimaced at the memory. "We were walking in the woods together, Trish and I had gotten separated..." something broke in his face and he wiped his eyes. "And he started saying things, stupid things about our friends. About Trish. That she was--" his voice cracked, "you know. That I was wasting my time looking, that I was one of the last pieces to the puzzle," his eyes flickered to Reynolds with an edge of mad desperation. "I still don't get that, I couldn't understand why he was...how it could be true." The air was so charged with tension that it nearly crackled.

"John Wakefield used him," he said plaintively. "Sully isn't...wasn't, couldn't be like that. Wakefield poisoned him, told him ridiculous things. He actually thought...he told me that he was Wakefield's kid, that he was helping fulfill his 'dad's' dream. He said that Wakefield despised the island, despised the sheriff, and he wanted to burn it to the ground. I guess the wedding was the perfect opportunity," the bitterness in his voice had more bite than a rabid dog.

"I didn't get how Danny lasted so long if he was paired up with Sully the whole time, but I guess it was a good cover. I don't think he...he killed very many people," Henry was careful to inflect his voice with denial-fueled desperation. "He actually seemed...when I asked him about Danny he actually looked upset. But Trish?" Henry gripped the edge of the table so roughly that his knuckles turned white.

"I don't know if he...I just, I hope it was Wakefield. I hope she didn't die knowing that someone she loved had betrayed her." Oh, wasn't that rife with irony. Reynolds was absorbed and Henry felt reasonably convinced that whoever was watching through the tempered glass would be equally engrossed.

Henry preferred a plan, even a loose one, but he was pleased with the way that things had been working out. While leaving the Island hadn't been his initial intention, he was glad for it now. But he didn't like the chances, the possible evidence that could crop up. But the danger was always thrilling, albeit terrifying.

But really, it didn't matter all too much. Jimmy was dead. Anything that might've connected Henry to Wakefield or the murders was gone. _The pride before the fall_, something in the back of his mind whispered and he heeded the warning. He had done too much, was too close to let it all fall apart now. Even the meticulous leave traces behind, and he couldn't get cocky.

"I got the knife from him, I still don't know how that happened and...I stabbed him. I killed him. It was almost easy, it's hard to believe that someone who planned the deaths of his friends could just...die, just like that." His eyes unfocused and an errant tear cut down his cheek and through the grime. The police hadn't even allowed him to shower, but it didn't bother him. The filth only served to help him get into character.

"Maybe he...wanted to die. I don't know, I have no clue, but why else would he...maybe he was sorry. Maybe he wished that he hadn't--" his voice cracked. He was well aware of the fact that sounding accusatory would only serve to bring suspicion onto himself, and given the fact that Sully had saved Shea and Madison's lives his story was more difficult to sell. But only marginally. Dead men told no tales, and for this he was thankful.

Knowing Shea, she wouldn't accept Sully's guilt without kicking up some sort of a fuss. But he wasn't all that worried, she tended to be somewhat irrational and singular, he doubted that those in a position of power would take her very seriously. He had an advantage as her almost-brother-in-law, but wasn't sure how far that would take him.

"Now I know...he was just trying to get me paranoid, try to make things even more chaotic. He really didn't need to have bothered," he added carelessly as an afterthought. "I can't believe that I...but I was suspicious, I should've known better. I've known Abby all of my life, I knew...I _should _have known that she couldn't..." he trailed off.

"Couldn't what?" asked Reynolds.

Henry fixed his eyes on the Deputy Chief's. "Couldn't have helped him. But he had said...he made it sound like he was working with someone else, other than Wakefield. But still, I thought if she...or Jimmy, even, had been involved I shouldn't let them know that their accomplice was dead. I just thought...if Sully could've done something like this, who else was capable of it?

"But it was stupid, and all it accomplished was making Abby think that I was in cahoots with Wakefield. Like she really needed that."

Reynolds sensed that it was too painful to delve further, and his rationale made sense. Days of being picked off one by one was enough to make anyone wildly paranoid, and his concerns seemed to be rooted in reality.

"What about at the church?" Reynolds asked.

Henry's eyebrows knit together. "Which time?"

"The last time."

Henry's face crumpled. It seemed to be an expression that elicited a good deal of sympathy and he was willing to use that. "Trish...she was on the altar like some...some sort of sacrifice. Abby and Jimmy said before that she was...that they saw her, but the body wasn't there," he said, nearly incoherent.

A normal person who had just lost the supposed love of their life wouldn't be particularly loquacious. How could they know that the only woman whom he ever truly loved was one-quarter of the surviving party? And that instead of being dead in a church she was simply in another interrogating room?

As soon as these formalities were out of the way, everything could be the way it was meant to be. The world had been wrong, he had been living in some twisted reality where he and Abby were two ships continually passing in the night. The memory of her mother hung over her shoulder, the ghost of Wakefield haunted her for years. But now she was exorcised of those demons. Of course she would have new ones, but in the end she was the better for it.

He derived no pleasure from her pain and wished that she could have been spared it but it was the way things were supposed to be. She had faced her fears and come out stronger, and after twenty-five years of wrongness the world would finally be right.

"I was looking and...there she was. In the church," his voice was devoid of emotion, as though he was still in shock. "It was a trap, of course. Wakefield was just waiting to finish us off. I don't even know if he realized his accomplice was gone yet. He came at Jimmy with a huge knife, Abby escaped and when I tried to shoot him...he wrestled my gun away and fired at Jimmy. I ran. I didn't see if...if he hit him. But I knew." His voice sounded tormented. At the risk of bragging, Henry truly believed that this was his best performance yet.

But he didn't relish it. This had all been a necessary evil and he looked forward to the time when he could finally retire his mask and start his new life. He only hoped that it would be sooner rather than later.

"And you know what happened from there," Henry said.

Reynolds nodded succinctly and gathered the papers in front of him. The only major unanswered question they had had was how his ammunition had ended up in Jimmy Mance's body, but he had covered that without provocation. While there were some questions, he was grieving and had just escaped several near-death situations. But he believed him, wholly and completely.

Henry had been careful not to mention Abby too often and to dwell on Trish, and he thought that he had succeeded rather admirably. "Thank God Madison and Shea made it out alive. But...do you have any idea why Sully let them go?" Henry asked him before Reynolds could inquire as to the very same thing.

The Deputy Chief shrugged. "I don't know if we'll ever find out. You said that you didn't need to go to the hospital, have you changed your mind?" Henry shook his head.

"No, but can I see Shea?" _Abby..._that was his real concern, but he figured it would be diplomatic to express an interest in seeing the 'one who got away' in a sense not even remotely romantic.

Reynolds nodded curtly. "Of course. If I'm not mistaken, Ms. Mills has made the same request." Henry kept his face composed but his heart skipped a beat. He couldn't wait to see her again...and it was his intention to see her everyday for the rest of his life.

He walked out of the interview room, hands uncuffed and name completely in the clear. It was a feeling that he had never before experienced. He was free. And just when he thought that there was no better feeling in the world, he turned the corner and saw Abby.

And just like that, the mask came crashing to the ground. He hoped that, save a few special appearances, he was going to hang it up for good.

**Tell me what you think! Just two words would be fine, I love to hear from the readers. Like, hate? I'm game for anything!**


	3. Grieve

**Thanks so much for your reviews, it means a lot to hear back from you guys! I hope you like this newest installment. It is a wee bit sad, but I hope you guys still enjoy it. This is a huge chapter, so please REVIEW!!!**

She crossed and uncrossed her legs nervously, feeling overexposed and anxious per usual. But this was a different kind of observation, this was understandable and even welcome. Unlike the rest of the attention that had been thrust upon her and the others. She had gotten used to people looking at her with renewed interest, the story of the massacre on Harper's Island had reached every news station in the country it seemed. Even in California. Well, she had expected it to be broadcast and known, Los Angeles wasn't all that far from Washington, but she hadn't expected to become an object of scrutiny herself.

People who used to pass her by in her apartment building without a second glance had started to gawk after she came back home. _Home..._it was funny, she had always felt that the island was her real home, even after years of separation L.A. had become just a place where she lived, she could never recapture the same feeling that she had possessed when she lived on Harper's Island. The same kinship. Even though she had been so loath to return, she still felt as though she was coming back to where she really belonged. Despite the past. Maybe that was why she had never established any strong roots in California despite living there for the better part of seven years.

But now? No, not anymore. Any ties she had to the island were severed, the many good memories were far outweighed by the bad. Before she hadn't wanted to return in fear of facing what had happened to her mother and the other hapless victims when she was still a teenager. But now it was the place where so many people she had known and loved had taken their last breaths...or more accurately been forced to take them far before their time. It wasn't home anymore. It was a graveyard. And she was never going to go back.

"So, how was your week?" asked Dr. Anderra with keen interest. He was in the higher spectrum of middle age, fast approaching AARP status, and he was the only psychiatrist Abby ever felt at ease with.

Her grandmother was insistent that she see someone after her mother passed away..._was brutally murdered and strung up on a tree, _and after going through half a dozen psychiatrists he was the only one that she liked. The first she went back to. She hadn't seen him in years, but after witnessing so many killed before her a little psychological help was welcomed, if not needed.

She crossed her legs again. "Um, it was good." Ah, the bland and untrue response. But he was used to those.

The doctor examined the clipboard in front of him and his lips sagged into a slight frown. One of her favorite things about him was the fact that he never blatantly dissected what she said, never asked _'and how does that make you feel?' _and always made her feel welcome...and not like a zoo exhibit.

"Hmm," he said. "And how have you been sleeping?"

Now that was a whole other kettle of fish.

"The same," she said. And he knew what that meant. "No nightmares, though, last night," she interjected, hoping to balance out the bad news with the good. Well, for him it would be good news. She was a different story.

It didn't work. "How many hours?" he asked, undaunted.

She bit her lip. "Five? Give or take." It was always take, though, and he knew that. It was a sad state of affairs that five or fewer hours of sleep was actually revitalizing her, now.

During the first two months post Harper's Island she had been lucky to squeeze in two hours together, mostly due to the horrors that awaited her in the dream realm. Ah, it was such an irritating cliche. Helpless survivor doomed to relive her horrific experiences in her sleep. They weren't usually vivid, at least. Just flashes of faces, incidents...namely the death of her father, the splitting of Thomas Wellington and the explosion on the marina. The most shocking. The most disturbing.

In her sleep she had seen Chloe plummet to her own watery grave time and time again, each time equally unable to help her. But when she dreamt of Jimmy...that was a whole different story.

She didn't run, she never ran anymore, and she stayed behind and fought Wakefield off with Jimmy. It was never cohesive, just flashes of images much like a slideshow blinking in her brain pan. And she killed him, just like she had wanted. She ran him through with his own blade, the same way that Henry had killed Sully, she imagined. And out of a plethora of nightmares, that was the only one from which she derived satisfaction. And it was the one that made all the rest worthwhile.

It was the only part of the experience that varied, in this lone instance she wasn't helpless and hopeless, running to safety while the man she loved perished. For once she could do something, and there was nothing more therapeutic than that. That was the most detailed dream of them all, if pressed she could describe the sensation of sliding a knife into a man's abdomen...though in reality she had never done it before. But that felt real. And she wished that was how it had happened. That she ended that bastard's life and she and Jimmy could sail off together into the sunset.

But, of course, it hadn't worked out that way.

That was only the basic layout of the fairy tale in her head. The bearable alternative. For that to happen, Trish also should have survived so that she and Henry could have their happy ending, as well. And if you put it like that, Cal and Chloe should have made it off the island, gotten married, had a boat load of kids. Preferably with English accents. That was the fantasy at least. The reality was far bleaker.

Jimmy was dead. It seemed that he had run out of luck at last, not moments before the helicopter had arrived. And all that was left was what remainded of Abby Mills, as well as Henry Dunn, Shea and Madison.

The doctor had once suggested that she was dreaming these alternatives because she wasn't really dealing with the loss she had suffered, and as a coping mechanism her mind had fabricated this happier ending. That she was dwelling on the deaths she was present for because subconsciously she blamed herself, and the one she hadn't witnessed she changed on a nightly basis.

It made sense. Logically, she knew that this was probably true. But she didn't want to believe it. Because even though her mind was plagued with the horrors of that fateful week, she was looking more like a skeleton than a person, and she was sleeping less than most insomniacs, she secretly didn't mind the dreams. Because then she could see them all again...well, that wasn't it, really. If it had been Trish, Danny, Malcolm, Richard, Mr. Wellington and countless others haunting her she would have wanted it to end. The pain and torment wouldn't be worth it. But for a long time, seeing Jimmy at night was the one thing she looked forward to all day.

It wasn't healthy to long for horrific nightmares. Even in the day hours she replayed the gruesome scenes over and over in her mind, but it was just like rewinding a videotape. It wasn't reality, it was an echo. But when she dreamed, she got to see him again. And though she knew it wasn't real, it felt right. It didn't matter if it was choppy and incohesive, if it was all just flashes and it was marred by death and destruction, she could still feel his hand on hers. His breath on her neck, and even the comfortable sense of protection she had felt whenever he was around.

She found herself longing for the island, but only because she longed for him. Despite all that had happened, a part of her still remained on Harper's Island. The piece that belonged to her family, they were all gone now, and the part that had always belonged to Jimmy. But she'd never return, of this she was certain. He was gone. But for weeks and weeks, months, even, those dreams were all she had left of him.

Abby didn't delude herself, she knew full on that it was sick and crazy but that reality was of no consequence. Night after night she was jarred out of sleep in the midst of particularly grisly dreams, her body couldn't take it and often sleep would evade her. But all she wanted to do was lay down and go back to the island. Because even if the very idea of doing so abhorred her when she was conscious, when she was asleep it was the only way that she could see him again.

Henry had pushed her to see someone, "A professional," he had said with his usual tact and she acquiesced, albeit unwillingly. And so she returned to the good Doctor, and it was as though no time had passed. The look of alarm on Henry's face when he absorbed her appearance was enough to push her to go. But in the beginning she hadn't wanted to relinquish the one thing she had left of the people she loved. She saw her father again, too, though his death was the most popular clip that her mind played she spoke to him as well, and that alone was worth the near sleepless nights and ghastly appearance.

At first she had lied when she came to see Dr. Anderra, she had mentioned the nightmares but not her desire to have them continue. And as long as she wanted them, no matter how secretly, they continued to return. He suggested the usual, though he was hesitant to prescribe sleeping aids or have her go to a medical doctor to obtain them, after a while there seemed to be no other option. But those didn't help, she tried them all.

And only then did she tell him.

He had listened without judgment or alarm, nodding passively as though all of his patients told them that they welcomed nightmares equivalent to flashbacks of horrific times. He suggested that she had post-traumatic-stress-disorder; he had hinted at it before but when she admitted her longing to see Jimmy, her father, and the others again he stated it with some more certainty.

Therapy had gotten exponentially more intense after that, he wasn't aggressive but he was persistent. And Abby knew it was he wanted to help her, so despite her longing to keep dreaming she cooperated.

_Admitting it is the first step. _She found her esteem for him growing when he didn't state that old chestnut, though the thought did occur to her. But the dreams persisted despite her admittance. If anything, they escalated. Perhaps as punishment for telling the good doctor the violence increased, she saw Jimmy die...and Henry was holding the gun? The dreams only worsened and grew increasingly illogical as time went on. Once Sully tried to pull Jimmy free from the burning building with a knife protruding from his side. Instead of replaying the instances with slight variations, an entirely new universe was created...despite the fact that it existed only in her mind.

One particularly bad morning Jimmy had leant in to kiss her only for him to turn into Wakefield as they locked into an embrace. She awoke shuddering with cold sweat seeping through her sheets.

She tried to omit just how bad they were getting, but her words couldn't erase the damage that her appearance had done. Nothing she could say would convince Henry that she was alright, and Dr. Anderra had never believed her oh-so-innocent assertions that things weren't too bad. It had been three months since the massacre and they were still haunting her sleep, and when she looked in the mirror she abstractly thought that she and Trish probably looked more alike now that she was decomposing six feet under and Abby was a living skeleton.

Her skin was pallid, corpses had better color, the circles under her eyes were scarily dark and she was too thin for her frame. There was a hollowness in her eyes that she could see when she looked in the mirror...though whenever she brought herself to do that she winced. It was as though all the death she had witnessed was a contagious disease that had infected her, and at first she thought that it might be terminal.

Henry moved to L.A. after the funerals, he didn't make a big to do about it, he simply told her that there was nothing left for him in Seattle. He got his own apartment, but it wasn't long before he was practically living with her. She figured she was like a sick puppy to him and he felt a compulsion to nurse her back to health, and she hated dragging him down with her.

He might have even been the reason she started improving. She reached a terrifying point where she couldn't care less about herself, but him...she just could not bring herself to put him through the pain of losing someone else he loved. She didn't want to be selfish, but she was at rock bottom. Depression consumed her, and it only worsened when at long last the dreams started fading.

They didn't cease, not in the beginning. But things weren't lifelike anymore. Chloe's falling figure shimmered like a mirage, no splash resounded when she met the water, she simply disappeared. The _crunch _of her father going through the window wasn't sickening anymore, it was almost cartoon-esque. Whatever grabbed hold of her foot in the tunnels was too weak to cause her much trouble and she moved along without distraction.

And all of this was good, at least that's what she adamantly told herself time and time again, but having her father fading was painful. Having Jimmy's touch feel more like a breath of wind than anything else was nearly unbearable.

Her appetite was gone, but she forced herself to eat without provocation...Henry didn't need to feel compelled to feed her, too. At least then she started to border on normal instead of anorexic, and the slight change made her infinitesimally easier to look at. She tried to get some sun, though she was always fair skinned she thought that some color might put some life back in her. And to some degree it worked. It was five months when she finally started resembling a human.

After such a stretch of time weren't looking at her as often. Ironically her finances were better then than they had ever been before, her father had left her a tidy sum and since she inadvertantly reached the point of celebrity her stories that were still in print started selling. Who knew that all it took to make it in the literary world was surviving a massacre that claimed almost everyone you cared about?

Despite her superficial efforts, her dreams didn't stop. The watered down versions made it easier for her to last for a while longer, two hours doubled to four. But she couldn't even feel any tangible satisfaction over this. She yearned to see Jimmy, to have it feel real, not just like an apparition in the far corner of her mind. She was losing him. It didn't really strike her that he was already gone, that all she was losing was peace of mind.

Henry was sleeping over most nights and he was getting only a little more sleep that she did seeing as every time she was startled out of slumber land he came into her room to try and put her back to sleep. It almost seemed funny that she considered herself moderately well off money-wise, what she had to the fourth power squared was a modest estimate of his riches. Mr. Wellington had divided his estate amongst his two daughters and Trish had already been wealthy. Through some odd clause, given that Mr. Wellington had passed away first and Trish had left everything to her fiance, Henry had received her share of the inheritance. That loophole outraged some of the lawyers and baffled Henry.

He called Abby after the meeting with Mr. Wellington's lawyers and joked that now he could actually afford to live in L.A. and he wouldn't have to pilfer food from her anymore. He had offered the money to Shea without hesitation, but she refused to accept. Along with the money, she had become the major stockholder of her father's company and she had more than enough on her plate.

From then on, Henry paid for Abby's sessions and wouldn't listen to her refusal. All of a sudden, half a year had passed and most nights she was still on the island.

"You can't hold onto what's not there," Dr. Anderra said one day. "You're going to kill yourself chasing a ghost. Do you think that's what your father and Jimmy would have wanted for you?" And at that moment she had hated him for no other reason than that he was absolutely right. She was peeved, the strongest emotion she had felt in weeks, but she had come back the next week regardless, and talked frankly and without editing for the first time.

The next night she slept badly, but there were no dreams. She woke up crying with hollow disappointment that she couldn't explain...and didn't want to. She had blinked and Henry was in the room and his arms were around her. He had taken up residence on her couch almost wordlessly, he could tell that she wasn't doing well and he wanted to do everything in his power to help. She sobbed recklessly into his shoulder, for once not caring if the tears or snot soaked through his shirt. He was wearing his usual night clothes so such worries weren't necessary, anyway.

He didn't ask what was wrong, she had a feeling that he already knew, and when there was nothing left to cry out she fell asleep. When she woke up he was next to her, arms still around her, and she was bowled over with gratitude. She felt safe...and she hadn't felt that way in a long time.

What was hard for her to comprehend was the fact that she didn't just lose her father, her friends...some of whom she had known practically all of her life, like Nikki, and others who had felt like family, all of Henry's groomsmen, for instance. Of course she had lost Jimmy, but along with that she had lost an entire future that she felt nearly certain that they would have had. She had lost a life, something that had been so close she could almost feel it. And that had been ripped from her, and it had left a scar. It was more than just his death, in and of itself had been unbelievably painful, but she felt like the future that was stolen from them was something that would have defined their lives. But instead she was the girl who got lucky and escaped two homicidal maniacs and he was just one of the victims.

More time passed and slowly but surely the ratio of nights without dreams versus nights with changed. The circles were finally starting to fade and now she looked increasingly human. On a good night she got six hours, though the past week had been a bit shaky. "Have you worked on anything this past week?" She tried to remember a session where he didn't ask that, but for once she actually had a positive response.

"I started something. I mean, it's in the beginning stages but I'm...actually kind of excited." She smiled, and it wasn't the dead smile he had grown accustomed to. The doctor had only recently began to breathe a sigh of relief when he saw her, with each passing week she improved little by little and he was glad. For quite awhile he had feared that she wasn't going to get better, but when she had hit the bottom there was nowhere to go but up. It had been a few months since she had been at her lowest, and so far there had been no setbacks.

The truth of the matter was that without Henry, it probably wouldn't have happened. And the Doctor knew this, knew that he was the only thing in this realm that had a tangible hold on her, and he was the only thing that could pull her from the precipice.

"Really? That's wonderful." He didn't press her for information, knowing full well that she'd tell him when she was ready. "How long has it been since you've been back, Abby?"

Every once in a while he liked to ask her, to see if her memory was any less precise. It never was. "Nine months, eleven days and about thirteen hours," she said without hesitation.

He nodded. "How many nights this week have you been dreaming?" There was no accusation in his voice, his tone suggested that it was a harmless question but they both knew otherwise.

"Just one," she said with total honesty. And it had been a good one. Jimmy was there. And, quite frankly, that was really the only standard a dream had to meet for her to not mind it. Her mind and body were on two entirely different extremes, physically she was feeling much better not being cruelly ripped from sleep night after night, but part of her missed the dreams. But she knew that it was time to move on. Well, it had been time for quite a while, but only recently was she willing to do something about that.

But she still ached. But she ached marginally less, at least. She supposed that was improvement "Oh? And what happened."

He was accustomed to the fragmented bits and pieces of her dreams and the nonlinear structure didn't confuse him at all. "I think...we were at the Cannery, I was going to see my dad." Her voice was reasonably steady, they had been discussing him and all the others so frequently that she was finally starting to feel comfortable talking about it. "Then we were at the church, Chloe was still there but...Jimmy was too."

Dr. Anderra nodded encouragingly. "Did he survive this time?" Her heart skipped a beat at his phrasing, but she nodded.

"He came back here with me." It had been one of the few times that he had left the island in her dream. They usually stopped before that could happen. "When I woke up...for a second I thought he would be there. With me." Her voice didn't break and her eyes didn't tear up, she had spoken of her dreams often and rarely did it elicit an emotional response. At least not anymore. She figured that was what the good doctor wanted, and she couldn't deny it's therapeutic value.

"I didn't cry," she said. And that was certainly something. "I mean, I wanted it to last..." _forever_. Her voice trailed off and she knew that Dr. Anderra knew where her mind was, but he didn't try to reel her in. It was better to let her feel on her own accord. She swore she could feel his body heat next to hers, but she had woken up alone. She was glad that Henry hadn't been there, she didn't think she could have kept it together if there was an actual body beside her own.

"Do you remember anything else?" he asked.

And she did. She didn't want to lie to him, but something held her back from divulging more information. "It's all kind of hazy," she said apologetically. If he doubted her he didn't show it.

Yes, there had been more. Henry had been there this time, and for the first time she could remember they were alone together. She had never really wondered too much about it, but she figured that she didn't spend too much time with dream Henry because he had survived, and subconsciously she yearned to be with those who had perished. The fact that Madison and Shea rarely made an appearance seemed to solidify this assumption.

He felt more corporeal than Jimmy did, solid and warm, perhaps because he was still alive and Jimmy wasn't. When awake she could touch him, talk to him. He was real, not just some fantasy she had constructed in her psyche. With the passing months Jimmy had become a watery version of himself, tangible in her REM cycle but only just. She had told Dr. Anderra this and he seemed satisfied with it, but having him fade bit by bit in her mind was almost like losing him all over again.

In this particular dream she had been walking alongside Jimmy, hands intertwined, weaving their way through the woods. But she could barely feel his hand in hers, it was like touching a ghost. But she held on nonetheless, she could never let go. It was the normal route they took, and all of a sudden Jimmy was gone and Henry had been there instead, her hand in his and he was as solid as she was. It was only a few moments before her mind changed course, but she remembered it clear as day.

And Abby doubted that she could ever forget it.

She knew why she felt hesitant to tell Dr. Anderra...because she knew what he would think it meant. _What it did mean, _a voice in the back of her mind chimed. She woke up alone and for a split second she felt a pierce of longing...but it wasn't just for Jimmy this time.

Abby told herself that she refrained from disclosing that information because Dr. Anderra could shed no further insight into the matter, but she knew that wasn't it. But when she needed to Abby was quite adept at self-deception and she worked hard to employ her dubious skill for that very purpose. To hear what she knew he would say out loud was different than just posing a mere hypothetical. But this fragment of the dream was hardly a challenge to decipher, and she didn't need his help to consider what it might mean.

Before she knew it their session was over and she told the doctor that she would see him next week. "I hope this week is dream free," he added as way of farewell and she couldn't bring herself to agree aloud. The past few months of greatly diminished dreams had revitalized her and for the first time in a very long time she was feeling good. Solid. Like just a regular woman with normal concerns, and less like a survivor from a bloodbath.

She didn't dread the evenings or particularly look forward to them anymore. Whenever she felt a pang of reminiscent yearning she checked her thoughts and tried to straighten herself out. And she was finally succeeding. It had been three-quarters of a year and clinging to what had happened and what never would was a waste of time and energy.

But she hadn't just lost her father, her friends and various acquaintances, she had also lost her home. All of her happy memories from childhood were tainted now. Every summer Sully was on the island was ruined in her mind...did he already think that Wakefield was his father? Which, by the way, blood tests disproved. Did he already long to kill his friends? Did he look at Henry and think how it would feel to run a knife through him, when he swam with all of them did he have to resist the urge to push one of them under? She had no idea, and even worse she had never seen anything in him that would have caused suspicion.

The idea that her friend Sully could have been a murderer was out of the realm of possibility for her, and when the police told her and Henry confirmed it she felt a piece of her fall off and die right there. Nothing made sense anymore.

Dr. Anderra wondered why Abby didn't feel more anger and hatred toward Sully, but it went against the grain for her. She had been shocked when she had realized the truth, that he was the one to blame. But apart from the initial and innate hatred, she couldn't bring herself to waste more emotion on him. Wakefield was the true villain in her eyes, Sully had simply been manipulated by his lies and promises. It didn't make him any less culpable for his actions, but she actually felt sorry for him. And in the end he had got his comeuppance. She viciously hoped that it had hurt badly.

She walked home, per usual. It seemed funny that she had never been the victim of any muggings or anything else during her years in Los Angeles, and yet when she returned to the virtually crime-free and sheltered Harper's Island she had encountered enough to last her several lifetimes. She opened her door and Henry was waiting for her inside the apartment.

It never struck her as different that he spent more of his time in her tiny place than he did in his far more spacious one, despite the fact that he could easily buy a home all for himself. But she had always had a Henry-sized blindspot, and even now it persisted in clogging up her peripherals.

But they were still grieving, though he was holding up substantially better than she was. Maybe it was natural to move on together, they were half of the pitifully small surviving party. Shea and Madison weren't really a part of their lives, the occasional phone call had become rare and even odd. Abby had thought that since they had survived such a painful ordeal together, there would be some sort of bonding. But truthfully, there wasn't. Shea was occupied with her own life, trying her best to move on seamlessly and bring her father's company to another plain. She wanted to make him proud, and all in all the Allens had been a bit distant.

Abby thought she knew why. Shea had been obstinate, refused to believe that Sully was involved, certain that there was some mistake. And she couldn't be appeased, she implored Abby but she couldn't agree. And after that, any pretense of friendship was over. Abby assumed that she was being slapped with silence, stonewalled, but she couldn't bring herself to care. She had much bigger fish to fry than Shea, and so did Henry.

How could she know that he wasn't grieving at all?

"What're you feeling for dinner?" he asked as she stepped through the threshold, rummaging through the kitchen knowledgably. He knew where everything was and even the contents her cabinets better than Abby did.

She shrugging, setting down her purse on a nearby chair. She had only recently regained some semblance of an appetite, and though he never flat out said it she knew that he had realized that at long last she was actually starting to feel hunger again.

Henry was shocked by the length of her grieving period, for the first weeks he had hoped that she would simply come out of it but that had been in vain. After a month he started to worry about her even more. He was so glad to be away from Washington, a good distance from the Allens and his old life. He had many close acquaintances who wrote him heartfelt wishes for his health and happiness and he couldn't count the dozens of flowers, chocolates and even bottles of champagne that were sent his way.

He was cordial, they would all remember him fondly, but he purposefully neglected the shallow friendships so that they would wither and fade. He didn't want to dwell in the past, he wanted to finally lead the life he was meant to have. And that was the plan.

Even if he tried, Henry couldn't quite explain his feelings. He supposed that they defied definition, but he didn't find this necessarily a negative thing. He had expected that he would be the one who needed time to heal, at least that's what he would pretend for the appearances' sake, but that wasn't the case. He liked to think of himself as a man who could anticipate changes in the grand scheme, but Abby's behavior had surprised him. And angered him. And saddened him. And invoked a jealousy so powerful it nearly knocked the wind out of him.

Jimmy. He had known all along that there had been feelings on both sides, but he thought...no, _hoped _that they were a vague inclination or a reminiscent emotion that had simply resurged because Abby and Jimmy's paths had crossed again in a decidedly odd manner. She didn't talk in her sleep, fortunately, but for all it mattered she could have screamed his name at the top of her lungs every night at achieved the same effect. He knew her, and she it wasn't necessary for her to explain her dreams, or, more accurately, nightmares. He knew what they were.

But even now that they were fading, consuming fewer and fewer of her nights, he still felt undeniably threatened. And Henry never would have thought that the idea of a ghost could jeopardize all that he had worked for. It was strange, seeing Abby at her absolute worst. She had tried to conceal it, he knew that she felt embarrassed and ashamed for being so low, but he could see through her without any measure of difficulty. He had always put her up on a pedestal of sorts, albeit unknowingly, and seeing her so morose had been undeniably jarring for him. But instead of feeling disappointment, or anger that the reality didn't measure up to the fantasy, all he could feel was love and unstinting devotion.

Henry had thought...had truly believed that she would mend in no time at all. Or, in the very least, she would heavily mourn her father particularly and all of her friends in a more general way. And he had been wrong. And out of all the horrible things he had done, this was the first that he felt any tangible measure of guilt for.

But she was getting better. And he thanked whatever higher power there was for that, despite the fact that he knew one day he would have to answer to them. Watching her deteriorate before her eyes had been the very worst thing he had ever seen, despite the murders he partook in and witnessed. He hardly blinked when Chloe plummeted to her death, decapitating Reverend Fain had been child's play and a part of him enjoyed ending Sully's life. But this was different, and apart from being present and pushing her for therapy he couldn't do anything about it.

If he had ever thought about it, Henry would have assumed that this setback would irritate him. He didn't like having his carefully laid out planning be for naught, but what surprised him was his own reaction. He wanted a life with her, and now he had it. It wasn't ideal, but he was willing to take it. For now. It seemed Abby was the one area where his patience truly was boundless.

When she kicked her shoes off, they went every which way whereas he liked to keep them lined up neatly. She would go days without making her bed, and the idea baffled him. Sometimes she would leave the cupboards ajar, the television on, her keys were rarely on the hook designed for that exact purpose and she did a million other little things and habits that annoyed him. But all in all, none of this mattered to him. He instead of bristling, gritting his teeth or feeling any strong negative emotion he found himself rolling his eyes indulgently. Her little quirks actually endeared him to her even further. And this amazed him more than almost anything else.

"I'm thinking cheeseburgers. You've got a little bacon left, wanna be bad?" he asked.

Abby kicked her shoes off with a smile. He glanced at them, eyebrows raised, and she moved to straighten them out. "Ha, sure." She considered something for a moment before speaking again, "I'm starting to think I should make a guest bedroom for you," she said.

Henry grinned, completely genuine. It had reached the point where the mask almost never came out when he was with Abby, especially after a reasonable amount of time had passed and grieving no longer needed to be first on his to do list. A part of him missed Trish, she was a good woman for whom he had once cared about very deeply. But instead of that feeling deepening with the passing years, instead it grew increasingly more shallow.

She was his dream girl when they were teenagers; young, beautiful, idealistic, and sweet. But her sense of loyalty had always been a bit skewed, and that had been a flaw that he couldn't excuse. But that wasn't even the breaking point, as he grew older he saw things more clearly. He was always a bigger picture type of person, and if Henry was honest with himself he knew that she and he weren't going to live happily ever after for a very long time. Granted, he didn't know that he would end her life on what was meant to be their wedding weekend.

"There's not a lot of room to work with," he said, glancing around the cramped space. But his heart was beating faster. She wanted him around, she liked when he stayed with her and the knowledge of that was as euphoric as any drug. She shrugged in agreement.

"You've got me there. I guess you can sleep in your very own closet. I feel bad having you couch it every night." She brushed past him, and no matter how often she did it he always felt heady. "Are you feeling margaritas tonight?" she asked.

Henry turned back to the fridge, completely aware of the fact that she was mere inches away, rifling through the cabinet for her blender. "I guess if we're going to be bad we shouldn't pull any punches."

The stark and unkind reality was that Trish hadn't been Abby. If he was forced to admit it, Henry would say that there wasn't much particularly special about the woman he loved. But she had such a combination of qualities that wove her into the perfect specimen for him. Even when she lay sobbing in her bed for another man, that didn't diminish her in his esteem. There was a fine line between love and obsession, and he was toeing that line. Henry knew that. But he truly believed that he was on the right side of that imaginary border.

He was self-aware, unlike his father and many others who might qualify as sociopaths...but the title didn't really fit him, at least in his opinion. He loved Abby because she was the only person in the world he didn't have to fake his emotions around, she was the only one with who he could completely be himself, without apology and without scrutiny. She had always accepted him as he was, and the part he had played always got harder to maintain when she was around.

And now he didn't need to keep it up. It was a strange feeling, for someone who always had an agenda in mind and a game plan formulated like a blueprint in his mind. It had taken him a few months to realize it, but now he knew it for certain.

He would actually wait forever for her. It had been the better part of a year, and simply being around her hadn't lost its novelty. It hadn't even faded. And he doubted it ever would. She turned to smile at him fleetingly when he reached into the freezer for some margarita mix and handed it to her without Abby even asking. His father would call him pathetic, but Henry didn't care. He was finally living the life he had always wanted, and it was liberating.

Abby turned away, frozen mix in hand, while Henry pulled the necessary items from the refrigerator for their dinner. Wordlessly she reached down by her feet for a frying pan and handed it to him as he turned her way. They anticipated each other perfectly...well, as perfectly as was humanly possible. Some days she felt as though they orbited around each other. Somehow as she went for ice and liquor and he slid past toward the stove they didn't so much as brush up against each other.

She didn't know what this was. What it meant for either of them, if anything. But when he smiled at her she felt a flush of pleasure that she had never before experienced and she found herself completely aware of his movements as they silently prepared. It was new, and it was happening so slowly that any guilt she was feeling was far less than it would have been. Trish was dead, as was Jimmy. Cleaving to a ghost would do no one any good, as Dr. Anderra constantly reminded her. Would Jimmy be impressed with her solidarity? Would he be glad that she was miserable for months and months? She couldn't imagine that the kindhearted man she loved would feel any measure of satisfaction at the state she had been in for so long.

Henry glanced her way and she realized how easy it could be. How nice...comforting, even. He was the one person in her life that she felt close to, and in a strange way being on the island together had bonded them together.

But Abby wasn't ready to let go...not yet. But for the first time, she felt like in the foreseeable future, she could be.

**I wanted to end on a hopeful note because I'm well aware of how depressing this chapter is. My sister didn't like it, but PLEASE TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK! I really would like feedback, even two words would mean so much. This is the first chapter that I've done where I realized the full scope of what this story is, and I thought I'd like to share. It's kind of strange, for Abby it's almost like a Nicholas Sparks' book, a love story after a horrifically traumatic experience. But for Henry it's the story of how he got away with committing multiple murders. I really like that parallel. REVIEW!**


	4. Anniversary

**Thanks so much for your guys' reviews, they mean a lot and they really keep me going. I always intended a short story, so this is the second to last chapter and I really hope you like it.**

While it wasn't the sort of occasion you buy a cake for, Henry still felt as though he should somehow commemorate the date. Make note of it. But, if he was completely honest with himself, he didn't think that Abby would feel the same way.

Predictably the media attention re-surged, but they both knew that it would only be temporary. Various news outlets tried to bribe the survivors into giving interviews, excluding Madison of course, but none succeeded. Shea gave a succinct statement, Abby ignored it per usual, and Henry said "no comment," at every turn. They weren't a very cooperative bunch, but the public at large took their refusal to exploit the experience to mean that they were still grieving immensely, and sympathy for the group swelled once again.

Henry was forced to attend to business weeks before, leaving Abby on her own for a fortnight. He hadn't looked forward to it, but there was really no other alternative. She, naturally, was fine with the separation...or at least that's what she tirelessly asserted. But when he came home...he considered her cramped apartment his home and not his own luxurious condo, she had replaced her lumpy sofa with a pull out couch and bought him fresh linens, folded neatly at the edge of his new bed. The memory still served to bring a smile to his face.

She hadn't been home when he returned, but when she came in and saw him cooking up lunch on the stove she threw her arms around his neck without restraint and hugged him close. It took all of his self-control to let go of her, and he nearly burnt her grilled cheese.

Abby wasn't back to normal, Henry started to feel as though she never would be, but she seemed content. She was sleeping almost regularly, though not quite, but with one exception she never hinted at having Henry move out.

Before his trip she asked him, somewhat unwillingly, if he didn't prefer staying at his own place. He shut his face down, not allowing his expression of surprise and disappointment to leak through. "I like being here," he said honestly. "But if you'd rather have your apartment to yourself--" It pained him to say it, but he couldn't even finish the thought.

"No!" she cut him off hastily. He almost jumped in surprise at the strength of his voice. She blushed at the fervency of her reaction. "I mean...that's not it at all. I just, I don't want you to feel like you have to stay around and keep me company if you, um, if you have other things you'd rather do." When she was excited or nervous she wasn't always articulate, and he had always found it endearing. Especially now.

The sincerity of his returning smile infected her and she grinned back. "No, I want to be here," _with you._

She nodded enthusiastically. "Good."

Dr. Anderra had purposefully scheduled their appointment for 'the day.' An entire year had come and gone, 365 days had passed since the Harper's Island massacre and Henry wasn't sure how to properly commemorate the occasion. Abby hadn't mentioned it despite the flood of calls, the renewed interest from media and acquaintance alike and the E! True Hollywood Story that was being conducted in their honor aptly titled "Harper's Island Survivors: Where Are They Now?"

To keep up appearances, Henry visited Trish's grave site in Washington. The Wellington plot. Katherine was there, as was Thomas, of course. Cousin Ben had never been found, but a casket had been buried full of keepsakes in his honor. Even Richard scored a spot in the cemetery, not in the locational hot spot but shunted off to the side, much as he was in real life. Henry vaguely wondered if anyone else had ever tread upon the final resting place of so many they had killed. If he had his way, there would be two more added to their numbers but he didn't dwell on it.

Henry felt like celebrating, but knew that he needed to curb that particular urge for decency's sake. He grew restless waiting for her and thoroughly cleaned the apartment, making her bed so neatly that even a drill sergeant couldn't find fault with it, moving her bureau in order to vacuum beneath it. As he shifted it over, something fell. It was so light that he didn't hear the drop, but when he turned he could see it there.

Naturally it landed upside down, but he could tell that it was a photograph. Henry knelt to the ground and lifted it, and a wave of shock and surprise kicked him straight in the gut. It was from years ago, at first glimpse he forgot when the photo had been taken exactly but knew that they had all been teenagers at the time.

Trish's arms were around his neck, cheek pressed against his and she was smiling radiantly for the camera, and so was he. Abby and Jimmy were with them, Jimmy had one arm casually draped over her shoulder and she was comfortably relaxing against his shoulder. They were both more muted than the loudly cute couple next to them, but there was a look of realness about them...like Jimmy knew that he would be holding her forever and Abby felt as though that was where she belonged.

High school relationships fail for the most part because people change and mature as they grow older, and the person that someone selects when they're a teenager is rarely the person they would chose as an adult. But there were some exceptions and for a horrible split second Henry felt as though Jimmy and Abby had been the exception rather than the rule. Then and there she looked more than happy...she looked content.

Gleeful, hormone induced euphoria was fleeting, but that level of peace was not fickle or influenced by the vivacity of youth and inexperience. It was authentic and unerring, and even Henry couldn't deny it when unexpectedly confronted with proof.

Abby mourned Jimmy to such an extent that Henry started fabricating other possibilities for her extended depression; losing the island as a place of refuge in her mind, loss of innocence concerning Sully, of course watching countless friends meet their end and worst of all, and witnessing her father's death.

But innately he had known that the true reason was Jimmy, losing not only the man but the life they could have had together. _Would _have had together. For the first time Henry found himself comparing that resounding loss to how he had felt when Abby had fled to Los Angeles.

A malicious and jealous part of him wanted to tear the photo to pieces, operating under the guise that to destroy the evidence would be to undo the past. Trish looked so happy, too, and Henry felt reasonably certain that he wasn't faking his joy. But that was a time of confusion for him, a time where he did what he thought he should do instead of what he really wanted. He was with Trish because it was comfortable, it was what he wanted a few years back and he genuinely liked her. But the only reason he allowed himself, albeit unwittingly, to continue the facade was because Abby was there.

It had always been Abby. But for a long time, he was content with just being near her. It wasn't until she began dating Jimmy that he felt something so strong and powerful that even with his best attempts to remain in a state of blissful ignorance, he couldn't deny that what he was feeling was jealousy. It was incontrovertible.

But even then he told himself lie after lie, that he was being stupid, that he belonged with Trish, that he only wanted her because now it wasn't an option. But as the summer continued he found himself making excuses to be with her for longer, he was willing to cancel his and Trish's plans at a moment's notice if it meant he could spend time with Abby alone. But it wasn't a powerful physical attraction, a sexual pull he had felt when he had met Trish. It was subtler than that, more meaningful and, as he soon found out, irreversible.

All the denial in the world couldn't change that.

But they were in their carefully structured positions, they were simply friends and neither of their significant others were threatened by the relationship because it had been established for so very long. If Abby and Henry were interested in each other, why wouldn't they be together? And that logic seemed sound, it didn't make sense for either of them to be with someone else if there was any semblance of an attraction, and Henry could see his best friend falling head over heels for another man.

So he did nothing. He hoped beyond hope that it would go away, that his love for Trish would re-surge and that his infatuation with Abby would be brief and fleeting. But they connected on a higher level than he had ever done with someone else, when he found himself pretending to be amused with something Trish found hysterical, or pretending that it didn't bother him when Mr. Wellington cut him to shreds passive-aggressively and Trish simply smiled and said, "Don't mind him," without any real argument.

Abby didn't ask him why he wasn't laughing at something she said, she didn't strut around in a skimpy bikini to subtly remind him not to step out and she didn't succumb to the advances of charming playboys just because they threw a few well-chosen words her way.

She was herself, and he found himself increasingly drawn to her understated personality. She didn't giggle to appease others when she didn't find something funny, she was straight-forward, unassuming and perplexed by the mating rituals conducted by her peers, not to mention the games that the girls she knew loved to play.

Nikki had once told her conspiratorially that it was "all about the thrill of the chase," and Abby had privately wondered why someone would want to trick a guy into liking them by acting aloof. Henry knew for a fact that she herself never engaged in such childish antics and it just made her stock rise in his esteem.

Henry had even overheard Trish telling her after she and Jimmy had started going out that it was pivotal to keep him interested, and while she nodded and smiled at the scheme she never took her advice. Henry found himself manipulating the group into more double dates than usual; it was easier to pretend that he wanted to spend time with Trish when Abby was there.

It was during that summer when he perfected his skill; if there were growing pains they were only slight and hardly noticeable. He found it surprisingly hard to pretend to feel something that had come naturally to him mere months before. Trish asked him a lot more frequently if he was alright, why he was so quiet, what was wrong; didn't he want to spend time with her? But he thrust himself into the role with gusto and any doubts she may have had evaporated.

He slowly but surely came to the realization that things would never be the same for him. And even more nerve-wracking, that he wanted Abby as more than a friend. But she was happy with Jimmy. As a direct result, Henry started thinking darkly of him as a stupid, passionless fisherman who was going nowhere in life despite the fact that they had always gotten along rather well.

But Jimmy never suspected this, nor did anyone else. Even his close friends didn't detect a difference in his conduct, and this troubled him. How could they be his friends if they couldn't differentiate between facade and reality?

Abby was different. As the weeks turned into months and college was fast approaching Abby was the only one he felt he could be himself around. He could dip into a pensive silence and she wouldn't belligerently ask him what was wrong or what he was thinking about. She let him be him, and that was something so new and refreshing that he felt like he could never go back to the way things used to be.

Henry wanted to be with her in a way that was so foreign to him that he didn't comprehend exactly what it meant. He just wanted to spend time with her, talk to her, laugh with her. During that fateful summer he even came to terms with the possibility that friendship might be all he would have with her...at least until she and Jimmy parted ways.

Something held him back from actively pursuing her, he was entrenched too deeply in his role to simply surrender now and to give up would mean cracking his well-groomed facade. And he wasn't ready for that exposure yet.

He tried to talk to his dad about it without naming names, but Mr. Dunn hadn't been fooled. He panicked, having thought long before that any danger of his adoptive son falling for his half sister had passed and he reacted vehemently.

"That's insane," he had said coldly, his surprise, fear and concern translating poorly and making Henry feel as confused and conflicted as ever. "It'll pass; don't throw away your entire future." He hadn't even known what that had meant, but he obliged his father, albeit hesitantly and eventually with great bitterness.

When Sarah Mills had died and Abby had went away, Henry felt an all-consuming hollowness fill his being that fortunately went unnoticed due to the grief and confusion that plagued the rest of the island's inhabitants. When he met his father he was disconnected from the life he had fought so hard for, Trish had left him for the time, and he was ready to listen.

Discovering their relation didn't stop his feelings, as much as he wanted it to. It disturbed him how easily he accepted it and how impossible it was for him to abhor the very thought that he had was in love with her...it wasn't until Wakefield told him the truth that he finally articulated that long-held belief. He wanted to feel disgusted with himself, break free and move forward he didn't. Or couldn't. When it became clear that his interest in her was not a passing fancy Wakefield began plotting her demise...which conveniently meshed with his revenge scheme.

His father was adamant that her existence would plague his, that as long as Abby Mills walked the earth his son would be a slave to a woman who wouldn't reciprocate. He said that he knew from experience, that she would always hold a piece of him that he could never reclaim.

"Does it change how you feel?" Henry asked. "Do you...does it stop?"

Wakefield pursed his lips but in all honesty he couldn't say that it did. "It's better," he hedged. "It was necessary. She took my life, my freedom, and you."

Henry had pretended to agree, well, he didn't need to feign disdain for the woman who threw him away, but Abby? She hadn't intentionally done anything to him. She hadn't harmed him with any forethought; in fact she hadn't deprived him of anything. Now that he saw, now that he felt the depth of his own emotions he felt freer than ever before. Given the chance to eradicate any semblance of affection for her or continue to live a semi-tortured existence, he would choose the latter at every turn.

But he didn't have to settle for that. He didn't need to stand aside and love her from afar, like some pathetic pining character in a Grecian play. He had a choice, well, a series of them. He could let life pass him by, or he could take hold of his own destiny. Clearly, he chose. And all in all, his regrets were few and far between. He hadn't enjoyed killing Trish; it was harder than he anticipated. J.D.'s death was the only one that brought tears to his eyes, he had wanted to spook him off the island, spare his life and let him survive. But it hadn't worked that way, and with J.D.'s dying breath he gave a cryptic clue instead of divulging Henry's identity.

He wanted to take his failure to communicate Henry's guilt as proof of his love for his brother, but he knew better. JD had honestly thought that Henry would kill Abby to preserve his secret...that her life hung in the balance. In the end that belief had paid off in Henry's favor, but the assumption still served to irk him. He never would have hurt her, no matter the provocation.

Killing his father had been painful, out of the whole ordeal it was his one action that he wished he could change. That somehow the man who accepted him could have survived the carnage of their own making, but given the option he would choose Abby over him time and time again.

Henry hadn't realized that he was crying until his tears dripped onto the photograph, and he placed it face down on Abby's dresser, covering it with her jewelry box. That was the past and they were living in the present, forging toward the future. Nothing could be gained by reminiscing about what he knew Abby would think of as a happier time and what he privately felt was a darker part of his life. Being here with her was so much better.

Henry was on the balcony...or, what was some cheap imitation of a balcony, when Abby arrived. Her hair was pulled back, her complexion had returned to a natural and human pastiness as opposed to the previous sickly pallor. All feelings aside, he fervently believed that she was beautiful, but even at her worst he had still found her radiant.

"How was your session?" he asked.

She plopped down beside him on her faded white wicker bench, arms barely touching. "It was good. No crying." She seemed to measure the worth of the sessions on whether or not tears were shed, and for the past few months they all seemed to be on the good side. "He read my book and he really liked it. Well, he said that he liked it but I don't really think he would tell me even if he thought it was awful."

The corners of Henry's mouth twitched. "It's not awful. Well, at least what you let me read isn't. I guess the rest could be pure garbage, but I doubt it." She laughed, and he never got sick of the sound. "But I'm going to go out on a limb and call it wonderful." She nudged her shoulder with his and he liked how natural it felt.

"You have to say that," she said.

His eyebrows rose. "And why do you think that?"

She laughed again. "You should think about being a shrink, you've got the condescending questions down pat." He grinned sheepishly. When it was clear that he expected an answer, she pressed on. "I think you're afraid that if you aren't enthusiastic about every little thing I do I'll spiral out of control and stop sleeping or something. But you don't need to worry, I'm stable." She considered that for a moment and revised. "Well, relatively stable. I'm like a sturdy old barn, not a cement block."

The sun was setting, and the effect was gorgeous. He considered pulling the old yawn and arm wrap but thought better of it. Her arms were bare and despite the fact that it was Los Angeles there was a bit of a chill in the air, so he wordlessly shrugged out of his jacket and draped it over her shoulders. She brought out the old-fashioned gallantry in him, and he never needed to force it.

"I have no doubts about your stability." Well, not anymore. For a long time that wasn't the case and his uncertainty had been troubling. "Now why won't you let me finish your story?"

She shrugged, smiling with mock innocence. "I guess you'll just have to wait until it comes out like the rest of my adoring fans," she said. "Oh, wait, I think you're the only person on the face of the planet who cares about it, so at least it'll be a short line."

He nudged her playfully. "I wouldn't be so sure about that."

She shook her head. "If it was a tell-all about the island that would be a different story but a fiction piece isn't going to pique any of those bloodhounds' interest, especially not so late after the fact." One year. In a way, she could hardly believe that much time had passed since she had hopped onto that helicopter, since she had last seen Jimmy. But in another way entirely it had felt like barely a month had gone by, despite her extended visits to the dream realm version of Harper's Island.

Abby didn't feel a soul wrenching ache every time she thought about her lost friends, fallen comrades. In reality, it had been a war and an unjust war at that. She had survived because Wakefield wanted to see her suffer and the others fell by the wayside and only served to sate his blood lust and entertain his alleged son. Sully...the name twisted a dagger into her heart whenever she thought it, and she was quite adept at blocking it from her mind. But on a day like today, she thought about everyone.

There were no tears this morning, after all it was just another day and she refused to allow herself to regress. She could actually think about them with some measure of calm, now. They were dead and gone and no amount of mourning and rehashing could change that fact. Naturally that didn't speed up the grieving process, but now that she was a whole year older and those twelve months had passed rather uneventfully...well, at least without any near death experiences, she felt something new.

She was still reeling, but she wasn't actively grieving anymore. She had confronted the fact that doing so honored no one and only served to bring her down. She didn't want Jimmy to haunt her, she wanted to remember him with all the love she had felt and not associate him with months of insomnia and horrific nightmares.

And when she looked at Henry, it wasn't like looking at her best friend anymore. She didn't see him as a kid, as a brother-like figure, she saw him as he was. And she felt something that she couldn't deny anymore.

"You write good." He said succinctly and ungrammatically.

A smile traveled the curves of her lips and she thought quietly to herself that no one was able to cheer her up like he could. "Forget switching careers into psychiatry--"

He nodded curtly. "Done."

Abby laughed. "You should be a writer, what with your natural talent for prose," she said teasingly.

"I'll consider it." She felt him shift infinitesimally closer to her and instead of balking, she leaned into him.

But something deep inside of her, buried in her subconscious, wanted to break apart the coziness and she obeyed hesitantly. "Did you go see Trish today?"

Those words were like a bucket of ice water poured over his head. "Yeah, I did. With all the money she left me, I just took a plane there and back. I called Shea but..." His voice trailed off.

Abby nodded in complete understanding. "Yeah, I know how she can be. She e-mailed me a few days ago; I guess she was thinking about us, too." But she didn't contact Henry, and this gnawed at her. "Do you miss her?" she asked clumsily, instantly regretting the question. It was like when those reporters asked parents whose children were kidnapped how they felt, and it served no purpose but to dredge up pain.

He nodded, sorrow tugging at the corners of his eyes. "Of course. But..." Her eyes flew to his instantly at the hesitation in his tone. "I loved her when she was with us, and I'm always going to. I just...I can't bring myself to think that she would want me to spend the rest of my life pining over something that I can't change and someone that I can never be with." He took a quick glance at her expression and knew that the words had hit her hard, as they were designed to.

"Yeah," she said in-eloquently, bowing her head slightly and studying a stain on her shoes.

A strand of her dark hair fell from behind her ear and brushed against her forehead. His hands moved on their own, and he lifted the flyaway hair gingerly and tucked it behind her ear. She looked at him and the expression in his eyes was so intense that she moved toward him automatically. She didn't know what she wanted, or why she felt so hesitant to act on her feelings, but when he reached for her hands she didn't move away.

Suddenly she felt raindrops, her makeshift balcony wasn't posh enough to have an overhang but any desire to move into the dry and sheltered inside of her apartment evaporated when he held her hands tighter. She felt her blood pressure rise and the majority of her being wanted to hold him close to her, feel the warmth of his skin against hers. It struck her that she had never been kissed in the rain, and she vaguely wondered what it was like.

She didn't have to wonder for long. When she didn't try to pull free he leaned into her frame, releasing one of her hands before he cupped her face and kissed her. It was gentle, hesitant, and Abby got the distinct impression that he was holding himself back for her sake. When their lips met she wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her abdomen to his, feeling heat and comfort consume her.

It continued to rain, the drizzling only making the glorious sunset all the more impressive and Abby didn't want to break away from him. It felt right, like she was at home, like why didn't she do this before? The line they had been toeing was crossed instantly and they were both pushed onto another plane. An area that was as of yet undefined.

The wicker bench was not conducive to comfortable kissing, but they made it work. He shifted his position so she could lay flat and he on top of her, their mouths meeting almost hungrily and only parting when one needed to gasp for air. His hands traced her hips and stomach before he wrapped them around her back. He couldn't think straight, all that he knew was that he wanted her now more than ever and he wasn't sure that he could stop if he had to.

Similar thoughts rattled around in her brain but the predominant one was that she could not remember the last time she felt so alive. And now every fiber in her being was on fire, and she wanted it to last. So much time had been spent in a place of numbness and despair, but Henry felt like her salvation. And at the moment she didn't care how clichéd that sounded.

One hand was slid up her shirt, tracing lazy circles on her sternum. Abby's breath hitched in her throat and any logical thinking flew out the window. It didn't feel wrong, it didn't feel as though she was invading previously staked territory and what scared her most was the fact that kissing Henry didn't make her feel as though she was betraying Jimmy.

She thought of him, but she was surprised and relieved to find that she wasn't wishing that he was with her instead. She had feared that whenever she was with someone else that he would be predominant in her thoughts, that he would be the first thing that came to mind. But he wasn't. It hit her only then that Henry was an actual threat to Jimmy's memory, that feeling his lips on her wasn't strange and foreign and at the moment she wanted him.

Only then did she push away and for a mad moment she thought that Henry would persevere, that the kissing wouldn't stop and his hands would continue roaming but that was ridiculous. This was Henry, after all. It took him a long time to compose himself, more than a few brief seconds to disentangle his limbs from hers and willingly put space between them. They were both panting when they finally separated and Henry pulled his hands back and pressed them together, afraid he would reach for her again if he didn't restrain himself.

They looked at each other for a long moment and Abby came to her feet. "I'm sorry," she said, stepping backwards and going toward the door. "I'm sorry." She didn't know who she was apologizing to. Henry? Jimmy? She walked briskly through the apartment and snatched her keys from the counter before leaving. She didn't know where she was going, but she only knew that she needed to get out of there.

Henry sat frozen on the bench for a long time. Part of him hoped that she would turn around and come back, but he knew her too well to really believe it. For a few minutes he wondered if it had just been a dream. He had been playing scenes like this over and over in his head for so long and he wasn't certain that if it ever happened he would be able to separate fantasy from reality.

But it was real. Her nails had left marks on his neck and upper back and he could recall the feel of her body beneath his with perfect clarity. She was there, she was real, and she had left.

He allowed the rain to drench him through to the skin and when he finally rose to his feet and clambered into the apartment the chill in the air had permeated into his bones. He stripped his clothes and stepped into the shower, cranking the water to the hottest it would go. He didn't feel it for a while, but after the initial numbness had faded he could feel the pelting of the scalding water but he couldn't bring himself to lower the temperature.

He wanted to feel something.

Now that what he had been hoping for for so long had at last come to fruition, he felt an odd disconnect. Henry had long since nurtured an unspoken fear that once he got what he wanted, it wouldn't measure up to his expectations. That the little quirks Abby had would grate on him, or that the devotion he had felt for her for so long would wane. After a year of practically living with her, he could state with complete certainty that none of those worries held any weight.

He could no longer imagine a future where she wasn't present, and her flight from the apartment scared the living daylights out of him.

Because while he was most adept at constructing a faultless poker face, he doubted that losing her was something he could pretend that he was okay with. He knew full well that she'd want to continue to be friends, but he wasn't sure that he could fabricate a facade that could possibly even come close to disguising his despair. Even his considerable talents weren't strong enough to successfully maintain a shroud that would fool her.

He had been there for her without any romantic implication for so long that donning his mask for the sake of others had become an easy and automatic task, but she was different. All of the denial in the world couldn't convince her that he felt anything but love for her after this.

He had retired his guise months ago and the idea of putting it on again wasn't appealing to him, not to mention the fact that it didn't fit quite right anymore. He thought about his father, what he had said about Abby being incapable of loving him. That she would never succumb, that he would spend the duration of his life pining over a cold and unmoving statue. The murderer in him tried to tell him to feel regret for sparing her life, to wish that he had turned the tables as his father planned. Henry Wakefield wanted to hate her, but Henry Dunn simply couldn't.

It was then and only then that he came to the irrefutable conclusion that if he had to do it all over again, he would do it the same. Because a world without Abby wasn't a world worth living in, even if he could never truly have her.

Abby walked down the street beneath the overhangs of the surrounding buildings, but even if she were to get rained upon she doubted that she would notice. She figured that she must have looked like a maniac, red-faced and dazed, stumbling through the neighborhood. Luckily there weren't many people out or she felt sure that people would gawk at her, though she had grown used to it.

The heat still hadn't gone away; it was like Henry had infected her with something incurable. As much as she wanted to, she couldn't deny the truth. She liked the way he felt up against her, how he tasted, how he made her feel. On a somewhat subconscious level she wanted to be plagued with thoughts of Jimmy when their lips met, she wanted to be haunted again because at least then she wouldn't feel quite so guilty in hindsight.

But it had taken a few long moments before he had even cropped up in her mind.

Abby had thought about him all day, along with the rest of the victims, her father especially, but on the balcony he had slipped away. For a short time, the thought of him had left her completely and that scared her more than anything.

She had lost him when she was shipped off to L.A., she had thought she lost him at the marina, he was irrevocably gone for good during the church fire, and it had been quite some time since he visited her dreams. But she always thought of him, in the back corner of her mind he was ever present. But when she and Henry had melted together he had been inexplicably absent. And it felt like losing him all over again.

Abby thought that she could take it if she was with someone to help her get over the ordeal, to assist in the healing process, but Henry wasn't that guy. He was _the _guy.

She didn't know when she started feeling that way but she couldn't deny it anymore. Henry wasn't a rebound, she had loved him as a friend for so many years that the transformation from platonic to romantic had felt subtle at first.

_What are you holding onto? _Dr. Anderra's calm and nonjudgmental voice asked in her head. _Or, should I rephrase, what are you willing to let go of?_ She was actually considering relinquishing Henry, flesh-and-blood Henry...for what? The memory of what might have happened? The future that she should have had? That _he _should have had with Trish? She had been going to therapy to deal with this very issue, letting go and moving on, but it was easier to confront in theory than reality.

Why was she digging her heels into the ground? Why did some part of her want to head for the hills when Henry had been nothing but wonderful to her? She knew Jimmy was a part of it, but he wasn't the only reason. But she couldn't understand what was holding her back.

She couldn't live her life dwelling in the past, considering how different things would have been if Trish and Jimmy had made it off the island. Her father had even told her before he was cruelly murdered before her own eyes that Jimmy loved her and that they should build a life together. Jimmy was gone and Henry was here...shouldn't the same logic apply?

It wasn't even as though she could tell herself that she didn't feel that way about him, it simply wasn't true anymore, or that it wouldn't work out, she felt an odd clenching in her gut that told her otherwise. What was it that made her so hesitant?

She could run and hide, ask him to pretend like it never happened and hurt him just so she could stew in her own juices and pine. But what purpose would that serve? Her mind was whirring at lightning speed and question after question cropped up. Dr. Anderra had frequently observed that she simply wasn't willing to put the past completely behind her and focus on the future. And she loved Henry...

Before she knew what she was doing she had whirled around abruptly and found herself breaking into a sprint. She felt heady from the thrill of sudden and inexplicable decisiveness, and the endorphins were helping. She figured that she looked like some stupid girl in a romantic comedy, minus the well done makeup and groomed hair, but she couldn't bring herself to care.

It wasn't an excuse; she knew that Jimmy would want her to be happy. It had been a whole year and she was the only thing holding her back. Just like Henry had said, she loved him when he was alive and that's what mattered...and she would love him for the rest of her life. Love wasn't an exhaustible resource.

Henry wondered if he should leave and sleep at his place, he had changed his clothes already, he had two drawers reserved in her bedroom, but he was dragging his feet. He didn't think that he could keep it together when she came back and wanted to 'talk' but it might be worth it if he could see her again. Before he made up his mind he heard the doorknob jiggle and the key enter the fob.

The door flew open and Abby looked wild, her hair frizzed from the humidity, her cheeks red and her eyes set with determination. He opened his mouth to talk, having already constructed a series of possible sentences to assuage any of her guilt or awkwardness but she didn't let him start.

"Do you love me?" she asked abruptly. His mouth dropped. "I mean, in a romantic sense?"

She was always one for surprises. He nodded wordlessly, stunned. "Good." And without further prelude she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him recklessly, disregarding her doubts and fears in favor of living in the moment. It took him a moment to overcome his astonishment but when he did he responded enthusiastically. She hadn't even closed the door and didn't realize that he had lifted her off the ground until her shoe clattered to the floor.

He spun her around, his lips curving into a smile against hers and she laughed. She found that she only laughed genuinely when she was with him. Jimmy was there this time, in the far corner of her mind but he didn't take precedent. Henry did.

Henry was afraid for a moment that he had dozed off and was simply imagining this, but it was real. She smelled like rain and tasted like sweat and he could feel her heartbeat hammer against his chest. If he could have ever imagined a perfect moment, this would have been it almost down to the 't.'

He thought of the look of betrayal that flickered across his dad's face when the knife slid into him, the pain, surprise, and horror that consumed JD in his last moments, Trish's hysteria and how for a moment he wondered if the ends would justify the means. He could now answer that with a resounding yes.

And what Abby mistook for unfounded doubt and a fear of moving on was simply her subconscious trying desperately to warn her.

As the wind whipped and rain fell outside Abby and Henry kissed without interruption, for the first time both were utterly content and blissfully thoughtless.

Her phone rang, but Abby didn't even hear it over the sound of his breathing and her heartbeat. They had stumbled into her bedroom when the answering machine picked up.

"Abby? Abby? Hi, it's Shea, if you didn't guess from the caller I.D. and my voice." She laughed shakily. "I really need to talk to you, could you call me back when you get the chance? Madison sends her love."

**Tell me what you think; I worked really hard on this chapter so I hope to get a little feedback! Thanks so much to my reviewers and readers, constructive criticism welcome.**


	5. Justice

**Last chapter! Please tell me what you think. It's long, I could have done two chapters but decided to super size it. Reward me with a review.**

Shea arrived first, naturally. She wanted to be calm and composed for their get-together and arrived a half hour before their scheduled meeting time just to get her thoughts straight.

As usual she wanted to feel some measure of control, as though exerting her limited power would force the world to make sense again. It was a valiant effort, one that she had been employing for over a year. It wasn't helping. She selected their rendezvous point, and Abby had agreed.

No matter the level of reluctance Shea was simply relieved that she had gotten back to her. It had taken her weeks to return her phone call and even longer to establish a good time for a conversation. Abby had wished to conduct it over the phone, but Shea resisted.

When Abby had plaintively asked why Shea couldn't come to California to meet her she made up some excuse but the truth was she didn't want to encounter Henry. Their meeting place was just a block away from Madison's school, so it fit into her morning routine perfectly.

She really wasn't the type to go out of her way for much, but if necessary she would have hopped a plane to California just to talk to her. But Abby swallowed her excuses and bit the bullet.

She ordered a coffee and was sipping it hesitantly when Abby walked through the door. For a mad moment she thought that Henry would wander in, tailing after her like some pathetic puppy dog. They seemed to be attached at the hip from what she heard these days, an observation she noted with no little amount of bitterness, but alas she was alone.

It was almost like slow motion, she hadn't seen Abby since the funerals and it was odd to see her again. At their last meeting she had been pale and withdrawn, and she felt irrationally annoyed by how greatly improved she looked. From the pictures Shea had seen, for quite some time she had been holding up even worse than she was.

But not anymore. There were remnants of happiness in her expression, something that Shea couldn't recover. And she envied her.

Abby scanned her surroundings before her eyes locked on Shea. She smiled nervously and walked toward her table, stumbling slightly along the way.

"Hey," Abby said as way of greeting. It seemed like a bit of an understatement, given the fact that she had taken a plane to come and visit her for reasons unknown. They were hardly there to shoot the breeze.

Shea nodded lamely and repeated the salutation without any enthusiasm.

It had been purely an artistic choice to call Abby on the anniversary of their return from the island; she hoped that her timing would make Abby more open to having a conversation. It seemed to have worked; she had shown up, at least.

Abby pulled out the chair adjacent to Shea and sat down. She hadn't been there ten seconds when an awkward silence permeated the air. Shea averted her eyes and took a long sip and Abby had already started wondering why she had come all the way to Seattle if only to have an uncomfortable reunion.

"How's Madison?" she asked, hard pressed to introduce some topic of discussion. They had never had much in common before and the passing time had only deepened the chasm. Shea had always just been Trish's older, slightly more uptight sister who had always been rather self-absorbed. Her concerns had never really extended beyond her fingertips, and Abby had never fallen in that sphere.

"Good, good. Well, fine. She's at school now. Still seeing someone." Her voice was a bit strained and Abby got the distinct impression that Shea was the type of person who thought that seeing a psychologist would be something slightly shameful. The projection made her bristle a little.

Abby bit her lip. "That's good. I mean, that's really good. I'm uh, me too. I'm seeing a therapist too."

The trendy coffee shop music cut up the silence and Abby fidgeted, momentarily wondering if she should order a drink just so she could have something to occupy her hands with. She muttered her apologies and came to her feet. But before she could go to the counter, Shea spoke again.

"Sully didn't do it." Well, that was abrupt.

Abby turned to face her, astonishment splayed clearly across her face. "What?" she sputtered, dropping her wallet back into her purse, beverage completely forgotten.

"I don't care what the police say. What Henry says, even. I know. _I know _that it's not true." There was no doubt in her voice and her certainty rang loud and clear.

Abby didn't know when she sat back down, but somehow she had ended up back in her chair. "Why do you think that?" It was such a shrink question, but she was at a loss for words. Calling her crazy or delusional would serve no purpose apart from royally pissing her off and making her defensive.

Maybe she was just clinging to the past, when the police had determined that Christopher Sullivan had been Wakefield's accomplice Shea had been in a state of shock and disbelief. And even over a year later she was still there.

When Shea didn't offer a response, Abby shook her head wearily. She was tired of conspiracy theories. Shea locked eyes with her. "It doesn't make any sense."

* * *

**EARLIER THAT MORNING**

It was a new development. This was something that Abby wasn't accustomed to; in fact it was something that she never thought would happen. But she knew for sure that it was a definite improvement.

Even before the island, the massacre, she had lived her life without the contentment she now possessed. Because these days she woke up beside Henry, and with a smile on her face.

When she thought of Jimmy she felt certain that he would have given that to her as well, but it was painful to think about it. She constantly needed to remind herself that living in the past was useless; that she couldn't change what had happened no matter how badly she wanted to. But now she had Henry, and that in itself was a wonderful thing.

She wondered if it was simply a silly justification to believe that her father and Jimmy would actually be happy for them, but she couldn't help but think it to be true. Jimmy had never been selfish and all he wanted was for her to be happy.

Nikki used to tell her that guys weren't too big into cuddling unless it got them somewhere, and for years Abby had taken that to be a general reality simply because she had never seen it disproven. But Henry defied that standard valiantly.

He seemed to derive pleasure from being close to her, holding her, and it made her feel safe. Loved. It was the way she had always wanted to feel, but she never would have thought that she could have found it with Henry.

He kissed the top of her head lazily and disentangled his limbs from hers. She grunted in protest and he laughed. In all honesty it had become one of the best sounds in the world for her. "I need to go, but I'll be back," he promised.

She heard the door close and promptly went back to sleep, awakening only to the tantalizing scent of bacon wafting through her room.

It was so easy, being with him had been so simple and painless, the intimacy had felt like a natural progression for them and any initial doubts had slowly but surely evaporated with each passing day.

Abby kicked off her blankets, reinvigorated by the delightful smell, and walked into the kitchen, a smile already playing on the corners of her mouth.

"You really love to cook, don't you?" she asked, hands on hips. He wouldn't forsake the comfort of bed for anything other than something of the utmost importance. She failed to see how breakfast qualified, but didn't care or dwell on the thought.

Henry smiled sheepishly. "I don't have a job or very many hobbies, so it's pretty high up there on my like list."

She leaned over to press her lips to his but on second thought kissed him on the cheek. He glanced at her questioningly. "I won't go full blown kiss until I brush my teeth," she explained, cupping her hand around her mouth and checking her breath. She cringed. "Bad."

"I think I can take it," he said but she shook her head decisively.

"I appreciate the solidarity but I stand by my original statement." He reluctantly went back to tending the stove when she skipped off to the bathroom. He smiled.

It was funny, really. He had killed his best man, decapitated a reverend and murdered his fiancée after having sex with her. The idea that morning breath could daunt him was outlandish.

He knew that Abby was slightly concerned by the possibility that he might compare her unfavorably to Trish, and he wished that he could think of an effective way to assuage that fear. But saying that while he cared for his deceased fiancée but was willing to kill her with little hesitation, while he murdered his own father to ensure her wellbeing wasn't information he could readily give her.

Oh well. He would just need to show it…time and time again.

He pretended that her remaining affection for Jimmy didn't bother him, knowing that she would be astounded if she understood the extent to which it ate him up inside.

But he was the winner. Jimmy was dead, and he had the woman he loved. Life didn't get much better than that. And he knew despite any reservations she might have, she was with him because she loved him. And that was knowledge worth imparting.

Abby couldn't explain it, but being with Henry had been more therapeutic than she could have ever imagined. God, she was actually happy. That in and of itself was a revelation. When she smiled it was genuine, never strained or for the purpose of appeasing and assuaging the fears of those close to her...though there weren't many left.

So this was what moving on felt like? She wondered why she hadn't done so earlier. But even the cheerful thought gave her a pang and Jimmy resurfaced. But that wasn't surprising. He was never far from her thoughts and would come back to her with the slightest provocation.

Dr. Anderra was even shocked by her progress and privately feared that it would only be a temporary solution, like putting a band aid on a gushing wound. But a month had gone by and she was still going strong, and he was starting to think that it was turning out to be a permanent fixture in her life. He had known that Abby needed to move on, and being with Henry was as good a method as any. But even he was surprised that it was working out so well.

It had been his unspoken assumption that Henry could be a crutch of some sort, maybe even act as a bit of a rebound for her, but that didn't seem to be the route they were taking.

Three weeks after they kissed he moved in, more or less officially, and since Abby's apartment was on the small side the majority of his things were in storage. But he didn't care. Honestly, if she asked him to he'd set a torch to the facility he'd do so without a moment's hesitation.

Most days when he woke up he kept his eyes closed for a few moments, hoping that the past few months weren't just a figment of his imagination. He had been subjected to very vivid and realistic dreams before, and he felt a little tremor of surprise each morning when he realized that this was actually reality. That he was holding her and not just for comfort, and not secretively.

She nestled into his arms instinctively, the way Trish used to. But this wasn't practice, anymore. It was the real thing. Abby was what he wanted, and now that he had it he felt euphoric. And he knew exactly what he needed to do.

Every time he kissed her he wanted it to last a moment longer, and even when the real world reared its ugly head nothing changed. She had bed head, her breath occasionally smelled, she wasn't ready for a more physical relationship, and she didn't always say what he thought she would. She wasn't a fantasy, and he discovered that it was okay, and that fact made him giddy with relief and joy.

He wasn't entirely like his father, it seemed. When she surprised him he laughed and with each passing day he grew increasingly enamored with her and by her, a feat that he would have thought impossible beforehand. Little quirks of hers failed to grate on him, as he had feared they would. And for the first time he felt absolutely certain that he had made the right decision getting the pair of them off the island.

He wanted his home and his love forever, but in a way where Abby was happened to be where he belonged, and he would rather never see Harper's Island again than lose her.

She yanked him from his reverie, wrapping her arms around his neck and going on her tiptoes to kiss him, smelling minty fresh. His smile was instant and stretched across his entire face but somehow he still remembered to flip the omelets.

"What was your very important task this morning?" she asked, reaching into the refrigerator for a pitcher of orange juice. He had already made the table, flowers in a vase in the center, the silverware spread out Emily Post style and the plates two of the same set. She hadn't even realized that she had matching dishes before he had carved a niche in her home. _Their _home, now. The sweet simplicity of the gesture conjured up a warm wave of warm.

"We needed groceries," he said in a level voice. It was an inscrutable tone that anyone else wouldn't doubt, but something told her that wasn't the whole story.

She pretended to buy it. "Hmm, you did? What else?"

He turned to glance at her and he absorbed the knowing smile that played across her lips. It still astounded him how finely tuned her bullshit-o-meter was when it came to him, and yet since the island she had never suspected the truth. _As far as he could tell. _The thought gave him a sudden jolt of panic, but he dismissed it for the time being.

"Nothing else," he said, but there was an edge of teasing that drove her crazy.

But she let it go. "Okay, okay. Keep your secrets."

He held the serving tray in one hand and the spatula in the other, skillfully sliding the omelets and bacon onto the tray without a moment's hesitation. "When you let me read your story, I'll tell you."

She laughed, taking her seat as Henry approached. "Ah, is that quid pro quo or blackmail?"

In his gentlemanly way he passed her the tray first. "A little bit of both, I think."

She served herself quickly and then handed it back to him. "Smells delicious. Well, then, I guess both of us are going to have to wait a little while to get what we want."

He took a quick sip from his glass. Ah, he loved hand-squeezed orange juice. "You're hard hearted." But he said it with a grin.

She nodded without hesitation. "That's what they tell me." Jimmy used to tease her about the same thing, but now she could think of it with only a slight jolt. In the immediate aftermath the idea of being happy, and even more importantly, satisfied and content, had seemed like impossible. A small and crazy part of her thought it would be like disrespecting her friends' and father's memory, as though they would have wanted her to wallow and waste the life she had miraculously managed to keep.

After she first kissed Henry she felt a measure of guilt, but Dr. Anderra had expertly allayed that unproductive self-reproach. Who was she betraying? A man she had been in a relationship with eight years before that had rekindled a week before his death?

Trish was another story, though. It had been hard to stop feeling like she was taking what had belonged to her, but what would she have expected? That Henry join the priesthood and spend the rest of his life pining over her? That wasn't reality, and that wasn't Henry.

He was loyal and devoted, but he wasn't going to brood and bemoan so long after the fact. Whenever she thought too closely about that she felt an odd twinge, like there was something wrong that she just wasn't seeing. But she didn't dwell on it. For the first time in a long time she was actually happy and she didn't want to ruin that with overly-analytical tendencies.

Shea's call had come as a surprise, and it had taken her over a week to return it. She wasn't sure exactly what she wanted, and if she really wanted to hear a renewal of her anger and dissatisfaction. She knew that Mrs. Allen felt as though Abby had turned her back on her by failing to believe that there was some massive conspiracy theory that had framed Sully, but it wasn't as though they were ever friends. Shea had been occupied with Madison throughout their time on the island, especially when it became undeniably clear that someone was picking them off one by one...or sometimes even two by two.

Old Abby might have felt as though she owed it to her to hear her out and let Shea vent at her, but she was loath to do so now. In all honesty, what did she owe her anyway? When they were in a perilous situation Shea made her allegiances clear, and Abby didn't blame her for that. But the way that she spoke sometimes it sounded as though Shea expected them to band together just because they were survivors. Abby didn't feel that way.

With Shea's schedule and Abby's ambivalence it took a while for them to find a good time to meet, and of course Abby was expected to come to Washington despite the fact that Shea was a millionaire. She offered to pay for the ticket a beat too late, as though she had just realized that it might be a hardship and Abby had accepted, not wasting any time with false modesty.

They weren't friends, but she figured there was no harm in hearing her out.

Henry agreed simply because he couldn't think of a good reason to disagree. The thought of Shea conferring with Abby made him uncomfortable, he was aware of what she believed and it unnerved him. He had somewhat naively hoped that Shea would drop it, or that perhaps his position as her near-brother-in-law would dispose her toward him. But he had been wrong. And he didn't like being wrong.

When Abby finished she put her plate and silverware in the dishwasher and reached for her purse, leaning down and kissing Henry on the cheek before heading toward the door. He reached for her hand and pulled her back toward him and she cooperated, nearly falling on his lap and pressing her lips to his. He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her eagerly, raking his fingers through her hair. She dropped her purse and cupped his face in her hands, adjusting her body and positioning her legs so she straddled him and her legs neatly dangled out of the arms of the chair.

He had a height advantage so even when she was elevated on his lap he still had a few inches on her and he used it to his benefit. Her brain went slightly fuzzy, as it always did when she was in such a close proximity to him, and he had unformed plans of getting her to miss her flight. But he knew that it was only inevitable, that even if he managed to keep her from Shea today he could never succeed indefinitely.

But he already had a plan. Didn't he always?

It hadn't taken much provocation or cunning to get Abby to say where she and Shea were meeting, and given his newly inherited wealth and resources it hadn't been difficult to set things up.

His heart beat against her chest and she broke away grudgingly. She often wanted to ask him if it was a hardship to share a bed without sex, but she already knew the answer to that. In a lot of ways she wanted to sleep with him, in the biblical sense, but something was holding her back. And Henry was patient.

He wanted to pull her back to him but resisted just barely. "You'll miss your flight," he sounded hopeful.

She smiled fondly. "I wish."

When she was out the door and he saw her walk across the street, he went to the cupboard and into the sugar bowl. She used Splenda and rarely, if ever, bothered to look in it. He moved the parcel out of its temporary hiding place, the real reason he had left the apartment that morning. He was afraid of getting the velvet sticky and pocketed the box for later.

* * *

**PRESENT**

Abby resolved herself to the fact that she wouldn't get an iced mocha whatever thingamajig and sighed. She was in no mood to humor Shea. "Why?" She couldn't deny the fact that she was curious about why Shea thought that Sully's motive didn't hold water.

Shea seemed surprised that she didn't challenge her, but after a beat she spoke. "He let us go." That was simple enough.

Abby's eyebrows knit together. "And?"

Shea bristled. "Okay, he kills Richard, Reverend Fain, Maggie, all people completely unrelated to Wakefield's first massacre. But he lets me go, with my daughter."

A few girls flocked around them temporarily, gossiping like a sewing circle, and Abby waited until they had dispersed before speaking. "If he intended to get away scot free, it makes perfect sense. You vouch for him and he looks significantly less suspicious."

Shea rolled her eyes and Abby was surprised that she would do something so blatantly impolite.

"It was a good plan," Abby conceded, though every fiber of her being was against admitting the merits of his devious strategy. It was still painful to talk about Sully, because despite all he had done she still felt a measure of pity for him. They had been friends for so long and she never could have imagined the rage bubbling underneath his glossy veneer.

"The police think that he wanted to frame Jimmy," and would have succeeded, "but his plan was ruined when Henry killed him. He didn't have the time to put it together, and Wakefield didn't know he was dead so obviously he kept going with the plan. Letting you and Madison go pretty much cemented his alibi, what kind of killer would let two people go?" Abby asked.

She had been told this so many times that it felt real and sounded like truth, what reason would she have to doubt it now? The police were convinced, his motive may have been convoluted but Wakefield was a manipulative bastard and Sully had never been that smart of a guy to start with.

It stung to think about, nonetheless. He had been a good friend, and it was hard to imagine that he could have just been faking it all along or at least for quite some time. How long had he been fantasizing about killing his friends?

"He would have gotten away with if it wasn't for Henry." She felt a Scooby Doo inspired déjà vu but brushed it off.

"Henry." The word was clearly loaded. "All we have to verify this is _his_ word. Think about it, other than Henry insisting that it's true there's no proof! Sully wasn't related to Wakefield and he didn't have a motive, apart from the flimsy 'doing his father proud,' one." That had struck her before, but it hadn't been sufficient reason to doubt the official story.

Her words struck Abby and she paused for a moment, knowing that her hesitation would give her away. "He was insane, Shea. The crazy don't need a lucid rationale to justify their actions. But who on the island had a good reason to kill all of those people?"

This didn't even give Shea a moment's pause. "Who got us together?"

Abby had to restrain herself from leaping to her feet, but she clutched the table so roughly that her knuckles turned white. "You're joking." She was surprised by the levelness of her tone.

It was clear from the fervency in her eyes that she wasn't. "Sully was stabbed in the back. Hardly seems like a defensive attack to me."

Abby felt her jaw drop and made no effort to reign in her expression of dumbfounded amazement. "That's ridiculous. He was practically your brother-in-law; you saw how he was with Trish. He adored her! How could you...how could you even _dare _to think that he could have hurt her? Let alone the others?" she asked, shell-shocked and outraged.

Shea's face registered surprise. She hadn't anticipated such a vehement reaction. "It's him, or it's you." There was no doubt in her voice and for the first time Abby looked at her as though she was someone dangerous, not merely a previously neglectful mother on edge, ridden by guilt. This was a new Shea Allen and Abby didn't know what to think of her.

"It's neither." The coldness in Abby's voice was startling. "Why can't you accept the truth?"

Shea made the conscious effort to keep her voice low. "And why do you keep denying it?"

A strangled laugh escaped Abby's lips before she could stop it. "I'm the delusional one? The police closed this case a year ago, the evidence adds up and points to Sully, not me, not Henry! Why can't you let go of it?" It felt almost hypocritical to ask her that, she had been holding on just as tightly for nearly as long, unconsciously hoping that remaining emotionally stunted would somehow keep those she lost with her.

In a way Shea was doing the same thing, just with a different method of execution. She had lost her father, her husband and her sister all in one fateful week. Abby really felt for her, Shea had lost more than she had and was clearly not as fine as she wanted everyone to believe.

She knew that she should exercise some empathy, but when abrasively confronted with a crack pot theory that either she or the man she...loved, it gave her a jolt to think it, had been the cause of the insanity that had lost so many their lives it was difficult to remain objective.

"How could you let it go so easily?"

Abby gritted her teeth. "I hate it when people answer my questions with more questions," she muttered. "And you think it was easy? I went through months and months of weird and horrific dreams, intensive therapy, self-loathing and self-pity.

"I saw my father die right in front of me and have had that pleasure repeated hundreds of times...over and over again in my head. My father, who I thought was a murderer because you were too busy shunning and blaming everyone else to actually get the truth from Madison."

Shea opened her mouth to object but Abby pushed straight through. "I know she's just a little girl, I know she thought she was doing what was right but does that really matter? It directly cost Shane and Nikki their lives. I don't blame her, or you," she said, but when the words left her mouth she realized that they rang false. She did blame her, just a little.

"And I don't want to dredge up the past but at the risk of sounding like a second grader you started it. I'm sorry, but the decisions you made cost you your credibility. I don't trust your judgment." It was harsh and it was cruel, but it was the truth.

Shea wiped her eyes impatiently and Abby was struck hard with guilt, but she didn't apologize. "I don't trust yours, either. You'd follow Henry to the end of the earth and you don't even know what he's capable of."

Abby's guilt quickly twisted into defensiveness. "I know Henry, and I know that he couldn't do something like this." Her voice was strong and the words were powerful, but there was a niggling part of her that doubted the veracity of her statement and she had no idea why she couldn't be certain. She frowned and pushed that aside for the time being.

"I always liked Henry. He was good to my sister, even when sometimes she didn't deserve it." Abby was shocked that she was willing to admit that. "I scoffed at my dad when he insisted that he didn't trust him, that there was something off about him. He never liked Richard, either." At the time of her father's death she insisted that Richard benefited from Tom Wellington's kindness, but she had known that wasn't really the case.

"He was right about Richard, and I think he was right about Henry."

Abby was ready to get up and leave, but some mysterious force kept her in her seat. "Why would you say something like that?"

Shea lifted her coffee to her lips, hand unusually steady, and took a long sip, a beat shorter than a gulp. "Richard was cheating on me with my step-mother. He didn't even resist when I said I wanted a divorce, he didn't want me anymore. He had never been as attentive as Henry, or as accommodating, or as patient. Even in the beginning stages of our relationship. But when he died..." her voice broke and she brought a napkin to her face to blot her tears.

"We had history together, we were married and I wasn't even sure that I loved him anymore but losing him hurt a lot worse than I thought it would. And there was no chance for reconciliation. Henry had been with Trish for years, they were supposed to get married, and he adored her. They were happy, at least I thought so. But he barely even blinked when she died. The first few days he was shell shocked like the rest of us, very convincing." The bitterness in her tone was clear.

"After the funeral he rarely bothered to call me or contact Madison. And just like that…he moves on. All those years, all of that history, it was like he was…just pretending, or something."

Abby scoffed, but Shea continued. "Tell me, is that how a devoted man mourns his fiancée?"

Abby pretended to be unaffected, but her words and certainty shook her to her core. She of course objected and insisted that seeing Shea and Madison had been too hard for him, that it reminded him of Trish but even her protests felt unconvincing. Maybe because she wasn't convinced. And she had no idea why she felt so ambivalent.

Henry had never given her reason to doubt him, but her inability to jump valiantly and unblinkingly to his defense disturbed her and she knew that her hesitancy must have been telling.

She wanted the ability to insist that Shea had no idea what she was talking about without second thought or a moment's doubt. But in that area she was lacking and it irked her to no end.

What was wrong with her? She'd done this before with Jimmy and couldn't understand why she was still grappling with the same indecision. Just with a different person.

"What do you want?" Abby asked. On the surface it was a silly question, but Shea had called her, bought her a ticket to the great state of Washington and sat her down with accusation and theories. Clearly there was an objective. She just didn't understand exactly what it was.

Shea looked surprised. "Justice," she said. "Sully can't defend himself, almost all of my family is dead and Henry benefitted. She's gone and he…he just let her go. Like she was nothing." Her voice cracked.

"I want the man responsible to pay, and it's not Sully. All that leaves is you, or Henry. And I know it isn't you."

If she had spoken irrationally or without deliberation Abby would have been able to talk down to her, get up and leave and tell her that she was being crazy. But the genuineness in her voice stopped her in her tracks.

"How long have you been together?" Shea asked when Abby didn't respond.

The reason behind her overwhelming bitterness became suddenly and entirely clear. "Almost two months." There was no point denying it, she wouldn't be surprised to find that Shea had hired a private investigator.

She concealed her fleeting expression of disgust a moment too late. "You and Trish were friends." It wasn't a statement of fact, it was an accusation.

It was difficult for Abby to keep her composure and a blush rose to her cheeks. She had no right to get defensive, their relationship was undeniably odd and she wouldn't expect Shea to accept it.

But the judgment stung more than she expected. "He loses the love of his life and jumps into bed with his surviving friend?" she asked, each word intending to injure and they reached their mark.

Abby opened her mouth to deny the assertion but was struck by the fact that it was none of her concern what she and Henry did.

"We're...he misses Trish, and I miss Jimmy. And everyone else, but I can't live in the past anymore. _We _can't live in the past anymore. It'll ruin our lives!"

Both of the women were thankful for the hustle and bustle in the coffee shop and the distractions that stopped any of the other customers from noticing the intensity of their conversation. "What about them? They don't have a choice anymore! We can't just forget about them." Her steady hands trembled slightly and Abby quickly shot her hands across the table and held them without a thought.

"We're never going to forget them," she promised.

Shea pulled her hands away hesitantly, uncomfortable with the intimacy of physical contact. "Henry already has."

* * *

He trusted her. But he didn't trust Shea. Less than an hour after Abby had left divulged her and Shea's intended meeting he called the airline and scheduled a flight to Washington. He had intended to do so beforehand, and even though he used an alias he was afraid that Shea would check to see if he was coming to Seattle as well. It was best done at last minute.

He happened to know that his plane would arrive before Abby's and nearer to the meeting location. A coffee shop? Shea's logic baffled him.

At a loss as to how he could eavesdrop at such an informal location without a server to direct them to a specific table he had been forced to engage in conduct he found unbecoming. He slipped a bug in Abby's purse and the notion left a bad taste in his mouth. His father would congratulate him for his foresight, but that didn't matter. He hated to resort to such means to gather the truth, but it was ultimately necessary.

Abby was with him, the massacre at Harper's Island was starting to become a distant memory and they could both finally move on. But Shea seemed to be challenging this blissfully reality, and he couldn't accept that.

He had no idea what urgent matters Shea needed to discuss but he had a bad feeling about it and his gut instincts usually served him right.

_Sully._ It was all his fault, he was directly to blame for all of this worry and confusion. If Madison and Shea had remained on the island, everything would be the way it was supposed to be. He and Abby...together without anything standing in their way. He should have anticipated that her survival would throw a kink in that reality.

It didn't just enrage him; it gave him a prickly feeling that coursed up and down his spine...everything felt off. This wasn't the world he thought it was; Shea's existence altered it for the worse.

Being in Seattle wasn't ultimately necessary, but he wanted to be close...just in case. He had already formulated half a dozen strategies to end her life, and would execute any one of them if necessary. He had been loath to do so before only because one quarter of the surviving party dying mysteriously would raise too much suspicion but if it turned out to be necessary...

He positioned himself in a building across the street, putting his earphones in and waiting for Abby's arrival. Shea had already been seated by the time he had set up and he felt acutely annoyed by this.

The possibility that Abby had left her purse in her hotel room suddenly struck him, and he breathed a sigh of relief when she came into sight, clutching her bag per usual.

Henry could see into the shop from a vantage point where he could assess their body language. He didn't like what he saw.

Abby was an open book to him. Her abrupt sitting, the stiffening of her shoulders were all as indicative to mood as her facial expressions. He could see Shea's face, the anger and bitterness were clear even from a significant distance. And it made him uneasy before anything indicative had even been spoken.

It had been the worst possible scenario. Shea stated plaintively her belief of Sully's innocence and Henry's involvement. Abby objected, but he could hear the slight but tell-tale hesitancy in her voice and it made a trill of panic wriggle its way through his system.

Henry had hoped that her confidence in him would be unshakable, but that wasn't the case. She denied the accusation, nonetheless, being colder than he thought her capable of and even in his worry he felt a swell of pride for her. She wasn't going to be batted around or intimidated by Shea Allen, at least not anymore.

The idea that that woman held any sway over her simply because they had both survived was outlandish to him and at least Abby didn't seem to share this opinion.

The horrors she faced at Harper's Island had truly made her a stronger person.

Abby tried to reconcile her with reality; that the tragedy they had survived was long since over, that neither Henry nor herself were betraying Trish, Jimmy or anyone else by finding some semblance of happiness. She assured her that they wouldn't forget any of them. "Henry already has," Shea said with a dramatic and steely edge to her voice.

The silence was deafening, and he could hear the bustling of customers around them and even from his considerable distance he could tell that Shea had an expression of smug satisfaction plastered across her face. Rage bubbled inside him, the likes of which he hadn't felt since the island.

For a long moment he thought that Abby was going to protest, but she didn't. She seemed to process her words and intent more seriously that he wanted her to. It had hit him before that he couldn't control her or always correctly anticipate her reactions, but he had never hated it quite so much before. He wanted to invade her mind, force her to come to her feet and leave Shea behind and come back to him, but she didn't.

"Just because he's with me doesn't mean he doesn't love Trish." Yes, given just that data it didn't necessarily mean that...but in this instance it did.

"Henry's not who you think he is."

Logic disregarded, Henry wished that he had a sniper rifle so he could take her out. It didn't matter that there were dozens of people around, that it would look mightily suspicious, he just wanted to do anything to shut her the hell up.

"How do you know who he is?"Abby asked with a distinct edge. There was anger, and he reveled in the sound of it.

Shea was quiet for a moment and Henry hoped that she would back off, but that was simply wishful thinking. "It doesn't make any sense! How can you not see that? Seeing them together...it was unbelievable, awe inspiring, even--" Abby cut her off.

"Are you trying to make me feel guilty? Or like, like I'm just some rebound?" It was difficult to maintain the flux of righteous anger and hurt broke through her facade and this simply added fuel to Henry's fire.

Even through the static and background noise he could hear Shea scoff. "No, though we'd all be better off. It wasn't real. They…it couldn't be real." Henry hadn't realized that he was holding his breath until he grew dizzy from lack of oxygen. How on earth could someone like Shea deduce that?

"That's ridiculous."

Shea groaned in frustration and it was the most human thing he had ever heard her do. "You want to know what Trish was always afraid of?" She didn't wait for a reply before continuing. "That Henry really loved you. That he wanted to be with you. I thought that was ridiculous, he'd been following her around for as long as I could remember and the notion that he preferred you was just..." She stopped herself in time from a blatant insult, but Abby got the gist.

"When she left him for Hunter I thought she was crazy, but she as good as told me that she wasn't sure. That she didn't know how he really felt, despite all he said and did. That whenever you showed up she felt invisible, like he had to try to put his attention back on her. And when you left...he was a mess. Given the fact that it preceded the death of seven people I gave him a free pass, but Trish wasn't so sure. God, she was right. He wooed her back after Hunter blew it, but now I see what she was saying.

"She wasn't paranoid, but she had spent years convincing herself that she was so she couldn't see it anymore. The different person he is when he's with you. We all thought that it was Henry and Trish, but now I don't think it ever was." Henry was shocked by the level of insight and was even more bowled over by the fact that Trish had some suspicion after all. It raised her in his esteem.

They sat in stunned silence until Abby remembered how to speak. "How could you say that? They were getting married! He adored her and you know that. How could...why would Trish _ever _think that?" she asked, but on second thought, she edited.

"Forget that, it doesn't matter. If he was so crazy about me why would he never show it after knowing me practically his entire life? Why would he date Trish for years, propose and plan an elaborate wedding? Ha, just so he could lure me to the island, kill almost everyone with Wakefield's help so...what? We could be together? That's got to be the most convoluted plan I've ever heard."

Henry breathed a sigh of relief, she didn't sound quite so doubtful now. But she was smart, at least in most respects. She had a sizeable weakness for her friends, Henry especially, and that served him well. But if she ever put together the fact that he was Wakefield's son, her disbelief would evaporate.

From an outside perspective she was right, of course. The idea of doing all of this simply to leave the two of them together sounded completely crazy, he knew that. He hadn't been able to tell his father the truth for that very reason. He was willing to kill dozens of innocents for sport but leveling the playing field so he and Abby could have a future was something Wakefield couldn't reconcile himself with.

No one understood the mask, the different personas, the skewed reality that needed to be mended. The fact that Abby was blood related to him, that her mother had given him up so easily. The Sheriff had known, and who else could have been aware of this?

The police and any other interested party had been looking for motive, singular. They hadn't thought that it could have been more complex than that.

"I know how it sounds, but think about Sully. Why would he do it? How could he set it up, he was the best man but not involved in the inner workings of the wedding. He was with Danny most of the time. I don't know why, but I just know that this isn't right. It wasn't him." She sounded on the verge of a tantrum, and Henry could empathize with her desperation. But that didn't make him want to slit her throat any less.

"I don't think we have anything left to talk about," Abby said. But there was no conviction in her voice, he could sense the conflict and it terrified him.

Henry saw Shea nod curtly, trying to regain her strength. "I agree."

Abby came to her feet before speaking again. "I don't want to intrude, and I know how painful all of this is...but maybe you should see someone. I did," she added quickly, and Henry guessed that Shea had employed the death glare. "And it was really helpful. Everyone's different, but without him I don't think I'd be okay."

It struck Henry that there were two ways to interpret that given their prior conversation. Shea seemed to take it as such. "I think you're making a mistake, you should think hard about this before you commit to anything. The police don't believe me, my so-called friends don't believe me, and now you don't either." She sunk into her hands and Henry supposed that she was crying.

Abby took a hesitant step forward to comfort her and Shea didn't balk this time. "It's really hard." That was an understatement. "Sully was my friend and the idea that he...he could have..._did _all of this is just...I can't even explain. It doesn't make sense, but since when did any of this have any reason?" she asked. "You saw Wakefield's journal, it was the rantings of a lunatic and Sully got caught in the crosshairs and manipulated. That's what Wakefield did best, right?"

_Like father like son._

"Don't you think that maybe people are having a hard time believing your theory because it's not true? You're mad at Henry for being with me and vice versa, but that doesn't make him a murderer. He saved my life."

Shea frowned grimly. "And Sully saved mine."

"I'm sorry," Abby said, though neither she nor Henry was sure exactly what she was apologizing for.

"Be careful," Shea said, and she meant it. The notion that Henry was dangerous was foreign, but Abby found herself taking those words to heart.

Abby was the first to leave and she was clearly in poor spirits. She was confused and upset, stalking past the very building Henry was positioned in without sparing it a glance.

She rummaged through her purse and scrounged up her cell phone and dialed. His phone buzzed a moment later, and he waited until he could no longer see her before he picked up. "Hello?"

She sighed. "Hey, it's Abby." He smiled reluctantly, as though he didn't know who it was. "I just left Shea."

Her voice was reasonably steady, but there was a weariness in it he didn't recognize. And when it came to Abby, what he didn't understand it made him anxious.

"Oh, how's she doing?" he tried to sound casual but his eyes were locked on Shea as she stepped out of the coffee house, looking as nonchalant as ever. He wanted to kill her.

He promised himself that he was done with murder, that he could control any homicidal impulses. That now that he had achieved his objective, it simply wasn't necessary any more. He actually felt excited at the prospect of killing her, though. Now that he deemed it wise he was already fantasizing at the different ways he could achieve it. He wouldn't want to prolong her suffering, and knew that leaving Madison an orphan was a cruel thing to do but his plan didn't change.

"She's fine." He was about to make more idle chitchat all the while pondering his best course of action but she spoke again. "Okay, she's not. She's just..."

"Shea?" he suggested.

She didn't laugh, but he thought she might be smiling. That could have just been wishful thinking, though. "Yeah. Just Shea." Her voice fell flat.

"You sound upset, what's wrong?" he asked with a measure of reluctance. He knew her, and knew that she could contain her suspicions and doubts indefinitely if there was no provocation, but he didn't want to give her that much time to internalize it. He couldn't even think about what would happen if she ever got sufficiently suspicious, if a part of her entertained the thought that he may have contributed to Jimmy's or her father's death he knew what would happen. And it wouldn't be good.

Abby paused for a moment. "I'll talk to you later, I just...I have to think." She hung up before he could say anything else and an icy calm washed over him. He fought it, knowing what it meant. He hadn't felt it for a very long time, but it was just as he recalled.

There were no guarantees anymore and he didn't know what Abby was thinking. Could she actually be processing what Shea had said, maybe believing that it made sense? Was he going to lose her?

His father staunchly enforced the notion of self-preservation in his mind from their earliest meeting. He was a survivalist first and foremost, relentless murderer second. If killing Wakefield meant ensuring Henry's own legacy, his father would have been proud of Henry for doing so. But his reasoning behind the patricide had only served to shock and disappoint him.

_Kill her. _His father's voice said, as though he were directly over his shoulder whispering into his son's ear. Henry stiffened. He wasn't accustomed to hearing voices. _The police won't believe Shea, but what do you think they would say if Abby backed her up?_

"She won't," Henry said aloud, voice cutting through the silence roughly.

His father laughed. _You're weak. I expected more from you. You're second best, runner up. You had to murder the man she loved to get her. It's perverse. Do you think you can hold onto her?_

"You're wrong. You were wrong before, you said that she could never--you were wrong! She loves me." But there was an uncertainty almost identical to Abby's.

_She's going to the cops right now. She's thinking of the best way to tell them, maybe send them to search your storage unit for good measure._ That in and of itself didn't matter, he hadn't kept anything that would serve to be damning but the violation of his personal property would certainly anger him.

_She can see it, you know? Sarah could see it and it excited her. Does it excite Abby? Is she drawn to you like a moth to flame?_

"Shut up."

Wakefield chuckled again and Henry swore he could feel his breath on the back of his neck. _No, she isn't, is she? Not 'like mother like daughter' there, is she? She loves wholesome Henry, Henry Dunn. If she knew the real you..._

"She does." He couldn't bring himself to utter longer answers anymore; he knew that this was all in his head and that only served to upset him further. Was this his subconscious talking? Was he simply so averse to losing her that he couldn't see that it was already happening

_Hmmm, does she know that you keep track of all the weapons in her house? That you think about the quickest and most efficient way to demobilize her if she were to ever cotton on? If she ever did, would you just go back to Plan A; hold her against her will before she changed her mind? No, she's obnoxiously strong willed, she wouldn't give in or listen to your reasoning._

He was going to object, but there would be no point. This was simply his imagination, the inner workings of his psyche and he couldn't deny the veracity of the accusation. "I wouldn't hurt her."

_You killed her father! Well, helped, I take credit for the actual act itself, but you didn't brook any refusal. And Jimmy. Ah, the man with nine lives. What would she do if she knew that it's your fault he's dead? You want a life with her, you stupid fool. And you actually believe that she'll never see it._

"There's nothing to see, Dad. I did that...to fix things. Make it right; make it the world it's supposed to be. There's nothing to see anymore."

_Liar, _Wakefield scoffed. _You're contemplating the best way to kill that troublesome bitch Shea Allen already. What about Abby? How do you plan on doing that?_

Henry roared in outrage, not realizing that he was screaming until the sound escaped his throat. He was fortunate the building was empty. _Very animalistic, Henry. You have to do what you have to do; I'd expect nothing less of you. The boarding knife would be dramatic, but for practicality's sake I'd suggest staging an accident._

It was never clearer that this wasn't his father, if only because his vocabulary wasn't quite so good. "I was willing to help you with Abby's dad, everyone! I killed my brother, _my brother, _and it wasn't enough. It was never enough! But not her, never her. You tried to make me, and I chose. It was her. And it always will be."

_She's calling Shea right now, telling her that she changed her mind, that all of this makes sense. That she knows._

Henry knew that there was no proof that could effectively indict him, let alone convict him of the crime. The accusation itself was shruggable, a man of lesser means would be ruined but he could reinvent himself. All of that was completely unimportant, he could live with that. If every person on earth thought he was a horrible murderer that was alright. But not her. Never her. He would lose her forever, and he couldn't even imagine a world and a life as meaningless as that. A life without Abby wasn't one he wanted to live.

_You'd better hurry. She doesn't love you, she isn't capable. She can feel something's wrong, she knows it. If she were my daughter, she'd have figured it all out already. You've had some time. She's served her purpose. Now dispose of her._

Henry didn't shout or rave, he simply turned around to survey the empty room with crystal clear clarity. "No." It was the first time he had denied his father outright, and it was a liberating feeling. Even if he couldn't have her anymore, even if fate cruelly yanked her from his arms and turned her against him he couldn't do it. She could have the barrel of a shotgun to his head and if the choice was killing or be killed he felt relatively certain that he wouldn't stop her.

"I did everything for you! You pushed, and pushed and told me that they all needed to die to serve a greater purpose, to cleanse the island of the injustice you suffered and the lie I'd lived. And I actually bought it. But I won't give her up, and I won't hurt her."

It was his father's turn to grumble with rage, but it didn't matter. It wasn't real. He knew it wasn't, but it was hard to process when he could hear his father's voice, the exact inflection he always used, the resounding disappointment. _I'm disappointed. I thought you knew better._

And then he was silent, and Henry was alone.

He didn't even realize that he was crying until his face was covered in tears.

* * *

The plane ride home was a hard one. She had slept in Seattle, not ready to face Henry or properly sort through her many conflicting emotions. He had tried to call, but she didn't pick up. She just didn't know what to say. The passenger next to her tried to engage Abby in conversation, but she was too absorbed in her own thoughts to be much use in any discussion. He eventually gave up and the socially conscious part of her felt embarrassed, but she had too much to consider to feel any degree of remorse.

The plane touched down so quickly that Abby could hardly believe the flight was over. She was shuffled off the craft like one member of a herd of sheep and just as quickly she was standing in front of her apartment building. Shea had hit her mark; Abby actually felt a strange reluctance to enter her own home.

It was ludicrous. She had known Henry since they were kids, she would know if he...it just wasn't true. She had long since resigned herself to the terrible reality that her friend Chris Sullivan had killed most of the people she held dear, and would have continued through until she and Henry were dead, as well.

She remembered when she was younger and her mother told her that if she swallowed her bubble gum it would stick inside of her and that she couldn't digest it. Abby had never been much for breaking rules and had abided by this faithfully, and her father repeated it for good measure and she took it as fact. There were countless other instances in everyday life when that same principle applied...if someone told you something enough times it must be true.

But that was fiction, a wives tale, unsupported by fact and entirely fabricated. But she was twenty before she realized it, and still she felt physically averse to swallowing gum simply because that was how she was conditioned.

What if Sully hadn't done it? What if the only reason she believed it was because Henry told her so? What if Shea was right, if he was innocent and the police simply accepted the first theory they had and set it in stone because it was easier to do than launch a full-fledged investigation when nearly all of the witnesses were dead.

There was no real proof, it was hearsay. Henry said it was true so it must be, that was her line of thinking. But Shea's theory was just a theory, no facts involved, just supposition.

Just because she loved Henry, first as a friend, and then as something more, she believed him. But she could be wrong.

She felt stupid standing outside, glancing dramatically upward at her apartment building. It felt like a movie, even the weather was fierce. She found it funny that even the wind was cooperating with her dark mood, and knew that a sunny day wouldn't have set the tone quite so nicely.

Abby used her key when she came to her door, simultaneously hoping hope that the apartment would be unoccupied and that he would greet her at the front door. When the living room was empty she realized that she was wishing for the latter slightly more than the former, and she wiped her eyes impatiently and blinked back tears.

She could hardly remember how she chose to occupy herself, Henry annoyingly left no housework to be done so she had to fabricate chores, organizing her shoes, cleaning her tooth brush, angrily ripping the sheets off her immaculately made bed, courtesy of Henry, only to remake it to the bed's detriment.

When she turned around he was standing in the doorway and she jumped and strangled back a yelp. He rushed forward, an apologetic expression engraved in his features.

"I'm sorry, I just...I didn't know you were back."

She stood in stunned silence for a moment. "I am."

The smile she loved curved onto his lips and her heart skipped a beat. She couldn't comprehend why she felt so anxious. He was her best friend; could the words of an irrational acquaintance really change anything? "Clearly."

There were only mere feet in between them but it felt like miles. "How was your trip?"

She smiled, but it was strained. "Fine, Shea was...talkative."

He felt panic flow through him from the tips of his hair to the tips of his toes and he felt in great danger of hearing his father's voice again. "Oh?" he didn't need to feign interest; he desperately wanted to know what she would say. What story she would make up.

"Yeah, oh. That pretty much sums it up." She sank onto the bed, momentarily forgetting her fretfulness over its appearance. He took a hesitant step forward but thought better of it when she looked at him.

He wanted to ask her what was wrong, but he didn't want to effectively enable her to lie and wasn't sure he could keep his composure.

Abby felt uneasy, surveying him with curiosity rather than affection. _She's gone_. But it wasn't John Wakefield this time, it was his own voice. He wanted to touch her again, to convince her that it was all a lie but how could he do that without admitting that he listened in?

He temporarily reigned himself in, resisting the temptation to kill Shea Allen. This was his last thread of humanity, a life he very sorely wanted to end but he stopped himself. Henry told himself that it was because he didn't want to leave Madison an orphan but that wasn't the truth.

He hoped that somehow, some way if he refrained from killing her he would win some karmic points, as though sparing one life would make up for the others. As though containing his instincts, like he had before his father had taught him how to use them to his benefit, would somehow stop Abby from leaving him.

But as he looked at her, he felt as though any and all hope was already lost.

Abby glanced up at him, part of her wanting to extend her hand and the other wishing that she could ask him to leave until she sorted her thoughts out.

Dr. Anderra said that was accustomed to avoiding confrontation and she reluctantly admitted to herself that either of those two actions would simply prove that annoying assertion.

If this was going to work, she couldn't be containing this mini-revelation. She needed to be honest, even if it was hard, especially if it wasn't the 'nice' and proper thing to do.

"She still thinks Sully's innocent," she blurted out, "and she's escalated to the point of thinking that you conspired with Wakefield." He was so floored by her honesty that he didn't even need to feign his shock.

"What?" He sputtered for good measure.

She nodded gravely. "And you believe that?"

Abby shook her head automatically, but paused halfway through the gesture. "I don't know what to believe, anymore."

He wasn't certain if he was relieved or terrified, so he settled for a hybrid of the two. "Why would I possibly do that?" he asked, working up to a convincing flow of anger and hurt. The desperation he didn't need to fake.

"I don't know! None of this makes sense. I was...it was finally starting to be in the past and now...I don't know," she repeated, raking her fingers through her hair.

"What don't you know? If I'm a killer and a liar or if Shea can't deal with reality?" She flinched at his inflection but he didn't apologize. She didn't expect him to, either. He had a point.

"You've known me forever, if you don't know by now I don't think you ever will." And he did the hardest thing imaginable. He left the room.

He had no idea if she would follow after him but he forced his legs to keep moving. He was glad she addressed it first, that they didn't skate around the issue but he was certain that if they didn't deal with this head on it would keep cropping up.

But he heard her footsteps behind him after a long pause and she called after him, approaching close enough to touch though she didn't reach out to him.

Before he could open her mouth she opened the floodgates. "I hate the fact that I don't know anymore. I knew Sully, we were friends and I never even...I didn't suspect for a second that he was capable of that. I even thought that my Dad could've done it, Jimmy for a little while. I've doubted everyone I loved and I just don't know what to believe anymore."

He took a step back and she instinctively extended her hand. "Believe me!" _Even if it's not the truth_.

He recalled the months following the massacre with a grimace, and if she were to lose him...at the risk of sounding wretchedly self-centered he wasn't sure how she would hold up. He had been a pillar of strength for her, ironically a beacon of sanity that she had been drawn to and healed with.

"Her story doesn't even make sense, I mean why would you kill them? But why would Sully, either?"

In his frantic attempt to convince her he almost spoke unwisely, but he stopped himself just in time. "I was alone with Trish more times than I can count, and the same goes with almost everybody else. Danny, you. If my ultimate plan was to kill all of you, why would I leave you?" He knew that Shea's shockingly spot-on assessment had involved his enamoration with Abby but remembered in the nick of time that he shouldn't know that.

Abby stood still, searching his eyes desperately for...what? Did she think all of a sudden that she could see the remnants of a killer, or that his innocence would shine through? That was outlandish.

"I don't know."

An odd and sudden thought struck her as hard as a rock to the head...what if this was just another way her brain had concocted to avoid intimacy? Henry was right...why on earth would he plan a wedding to the girl of his dreams only to sabotage it with no clear motive?

And honestly, at the risk of sounding self-deprecating she couldn't imagine that Henry could be in love with her when he was with Trish.

This whole ordeal skewed her perspective. Intuition and paranoia intermingled until she could no longer distinguish one from the other. She remembered comforting him when J.D. had died, the sorrow was real. She would know.

"Look at me," he commanded. It wasn't necessary; she could hardly keep her eyes off of him. "I would never do that. Could never do it, given any provocation. That was the worst week of my life and at the risk of sounding selfish I just want to get as far away from it as possible. You know me, you live with me! Do you really think I'm capable of cold-blooded murder?"

He really hated lying to her, but it was the only way to secure the future both of them needed.

She shook her head, forcing the doubt from her system. Why was she so eager to stop herself from being happy? She had a man who loved her and she was completely paranoid, giving Shea and her theory a foothold in her mind because she couldn't bring herself to let the past lie.

"I love you," she said without a tremor of uncertainty.

She really did. And how could she love a murderer?

She was thoroughly scrambled from her numerous liaisons with near-death experiences and she was unconsciously so eager to shatter whatever happiness she managed to grasp onto that she was willing to lose faith in someone who never lost faith in her.

His eyes lit up. "Do you still think that I could have done those...awful things?" The way he asked tore her chest up into mangled little pieces. This was a man she could spend her life with, and she insisted on dredging up painful memories for no better reason than that Shea had preyed on her curiosity and she had been gullible.

Abby wiped her eyes impatiently. "No, no. That was...insane. Shea can't let go. Well, won't, I guess." _But we can_.

Henry had been devoted to Trish from day one, and on reflection it was absurd that he had just been pretending for some nefarious reason. She made a mental note not to contact Shea. She was ashamed with herself for being so wretchedly credulous, believing her wild theory over Henry's explanation.

"I'm sorry that I...I can't believe I entertained the thought."

He shook his head. "It's been hard; I'm not sure how I would have handled it if it wasn't for you." That would be an alternate universe not worth living in.

He wondered somewhat detachedly how his life would have been had he never met Abby, but it was hard to think of something so horrible objectively. His father mocked him when he realized that Henry was in love with his own half-sister, but he had reconciled with that fact.

And Abby would never need to.

"You would've been fine; it's me that would have been the pathetic, crumbling mess."

He scoffed. "You were never pathetic."

She raised an eyebrow, glad that the tears that vacated her eyes at long last. "You're such a liar." The banter between them had always been good, but at the oddest moments it reminded her of how she used to tease Jimmy.

"If you ever get struck with the idea that I might be a homicidal maniac, make sure you tell me," he said seriously.

She smiled. "Why, so you can kill me?" An image cut through his brain of him splattering her brains across the wall with a frying pan. It took a lot of self-control to keep his expression the same, and he mentally turned the impromptu weapon on himself.

"I'd kill myself first." And that was a promise. She smiled, but there was a bittersweet quality to it. She wasn't sure if things could ever be the same now.

He acted on instinct and without thought, wrapping his arms around her waist and pulling her into him. Their lips crashed together and hesitancy was gone on her part. It was hard to remember that there was a time when she felt completely platonic toward him.

His lips moved from hers and worked their way laterally toward her ear, then down her neck, before finally using her sternum as a road map. Her breath hitched in her throat and she tangled her fingers in his hair, thoughtlessly backing up against the nearby wall.

This wasn't the time or the place, but she couldn't bring herself to break away. She always envisioned their first time on a bed, but she didn't think she could make it that far.

Abby wrapped a single leg around his waist, then leveraging herself up to work the other one around. She pulled his head back upward, kissing him and strategically stropping her body against his. He made a sound that made her laugh and his mouth lingered on her neck.

It was strange to think that minutes ago she was wary of him, and she didn't understand exactly what had changed. She didn't recall removing her shirt but the next time she blinked it was on a crumpled heap on the floor, along with his.

He unsnapped the top button of her jeans, his fingers moving expertly from her chest to her knees and all the places in between. She felt a steady and powerful throbbing that made her vision go blurry. She bit his ear as he addressed the issue. He didn't register the pain and wished that he had some form of protection on him. But for the moment the thought was secondary.

As she moved against him, the sweet scent of her persisting despite the staleness of the airplane, all he could think about was touching her. He wanted her to know exactly what he was capable of, and not in terms of murderous intent.

She made a noise somewhere between a scream and a gasp as he moved deeper, pressing her lips to his once again as she reached her peak. It was painful to not solve his physical condition but he didn't want to rush her. But despite the fact that she was riding on a high unlike anything she had ever felt before she wasn't completely gone.

He kissed her neck and felt tears well in his eyes, momentarily terrified that this would be their first and only liaison. Despite her climax she continued to move against him restlessly, both of their pants still on, moving to kiss his shoulders and bite him gently. It roused a fervent reaction, and she could feel it.

Every inch of him ached for release and he wasn't sure he could stop even if he wanted to. Logical thoughts of birth control went out the window. She struggled with the waistband of his jeans for a moment and he tugged on hers, not removing them entirely but enough so.

He bit her neck, returning the favor as he tried to make the moment last before he went in and when he did she pressed her chest against his and wrapped her arms around his back, fingers clawing on his skin and sliding over a thin sheen of sweat. She sighed in his ear. He couldn't explain exactly why this got him going, but it did.

"Switch sides," she murmured and he did, holding her up and spinning around to press his back to the wall. She detangled her arms and pressed her palms on either side of his head and pushed against the wall, tightening her legs and elevating herself. He gasped, locking eyes with her as they worked together. She moved her hips rhythmically with his. His lips met her throat and there went her concentration.

They melted into each other and collapsed onto the floor, neither of them having any inclination to move.

"That was unexpected," she said when her voice box started working again.

He breathed raggedly and nodded. "Oh, yeah." He grasped her hand and looked at her, amazed that his fantasies fell so short of reality. That was by far the hottest sex of his life, and that was saying something. "We need to do that more often."

She laughed. "Uh huh. Are you going to tell me where you actually went yesterday morning?"

"You're preying on my weakened defenses. What, are you scared I was out burying a body?" he asked, as though it were easy to joke about such a thing. If he hadn't contained himself it easily could have been reality.

She pushed her damp hair out of her eyes. "Until you tell me I won't know, now, will I?" He didn't answer at first so she took the initiative. "I didn't want you to read my story completely because there's one character who...was inspired by you. I was embarrassed. And fine, you can read it if it's that important."

Henry sat up and glanced down at her, doubting that any sight could ever be half so beautiful. "I just have one more question to ask you."

She sighed. "Ah, you're throwing a kink in our quid pro quo!" she complained, but it was with laugh.

He pulled his jeans back on and jumped up, running into the next room with a child-like eagerness. "I thought it was blackmail," he called from the bedroom.

She'd need to talk to the good doctor about this later, about why some crack pot theory gave her so much food for thought when Henry had been nothing short of wonderful to her.

She'd push any doubts from her mind, thought she hated not being able to trust her intuition it was a necessity. Henry, a killer? It was a ludicrous notion.

Henry returned with a knowing smile on his face. He was nervous, but he refused to show it. He had convinced her of his innocence, but it would be a long road ahead maintaining that certainty. And he was more than up to the task.

"What's your question?" she asked.

His eyebrows rose slightly. "You're prefacing my question with a question so I'll need to answer in the form of a question."

Abby reached for her shirt and slipped it on, embarrassed by her extended partial nudity. He would have objected, but he would have plenty of other opportunities. "Ah, you're making my head hurt."

He grinned. "Okay, here goes."

"I'm ready."

He dropped to one knee and held her hand in his. "Okay," he said, clearing his throat. "Don't laugh."

She laughed. "Sorry, sorry, I didn't mean to its just hard to keep a straight face when someone tells you that you need to." She composed herself. "Proceed."

This was an odd place to have this discussion, he had anticipated a romantic candlelit dinner or a walk on the beach, but somehow this worked. It fit. Abby wasn't the type of woman who needed that, anyway. She liked directness.

"Abby," the word was like a sentence in and of itself. She wanted to comment that he was increasing the suspense tenfold but the intensity in his expression stopped her. "Will you marry me?" He reached into his pocket and pulled out a velvet box. The very same one he had picked up the day before after careful deliberation.

Her jaw dropped. When she was a teenager she imagined Jimmy asking, but she supposed so many other girls did. The thought hadn't recently entered her mind, but as the man she loved knelt in front of her, having valiantly recovered from her half accusing him of murder, she knew what she was going to say.

This was a future, their future, if she let it be. And she loved him. The tight coil in the pit of her stomach loosened and she felt an eerie calm wash over her.

There was only really one answer she could give him, and she gave it. Her sight grew blurry with tears and he embraced her, holding the love of his life close to him, disbelief and euphoria washing over him.

Staunch believers in karma would like to believe that justice prevails somehow, some way, perhaps preventing the offender from ever achieving true happiness. That the judicial system of the universe would snatch the very opportunity away if ever presented it. But the fact of the matter is sometimes it doesn't.

He slipped the ring on her finger and pushed her paranoia away permanently. It was an odd realization for Abby; he wasn't Trish's Henry anymore. He was hers. And to an equal extent she was his, as well. And until the faraway day one of them died, they would belong to each other.

He'd already tried a big church wedding…it hadn't ended well. He figured that they could head down to city hall one day and have no one be the wiser.

Henry contemplated uttering that old cliché, that she had made him the happiest man in the world, but he allowed it to go unsaid. It wasn't really necessary, she understood that. But some things she couldn't. _If only she knew..._but she never would.

**THE END**

**Luice, I'm sorry this took longer but I had no idea I was going to write so much. I hope you forgive me! I wrote easily double what I expected. So for that I would like a review, tell me what you think PLEASE. And yes, I made up the word 'enamorment,' I couldn't find a good equivalent. And I titled the chapter Justice kind of to throw you guys off. Sorry, couldn't resist ;-)**


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